It has been too long since my last post and since then, I've been thrown a curve ball. Coming into this project, I pretty much imagined that I was going to make an informational poster, but as things go sometimes, I hit a wall.
There are enough awareness posters in existence, though actually there are practically none in San Jose.
Anyways. How do you motivate people to test for HBV? I don't know if I'm just a pessimist, but you can't make them. I have to honestly admit that even though I'm doing all of this research on HBV, I don't feel motivated to get tested or vaccinated. That's so horrible of me.
But the facts are there if you're willing to look it up. HBV is a big deal within the Vietnamese community. Actually the Asian and Pacific Island community in general (though it does hit the Vietnamese population pretty hard). Liver cancer is the leading cause of death for Vietnamese men. Sometimes you just look at statistics and numbers and you feel so detached from that number. It's just a number. It means nothing to me. Should you be listing names? Would that cause us to react differently? How come no one cares about anything really until it happens to them?
Carrying on, so the question is how do I deliver my message? I literally have 20 tabs open and I'm pouring through all of my sources over and over just to find that little answer. Well, eventually I stumbled across it. The doctors. Actually, I've discussed this with my panel member, but I wasn't too interested in it at that moment.
I've found several articles stating that not all doctors are aware of the disparity rate of HBV infections between APIs (Asian and Pacific Island) and the rest of the general population. While HBV rates are low in the US in comparison to that worldwide, 60% of the cases are APIs. There is a discomforting amount of doctors that right out don't test for HBV. I know you're supposed to your own best health advocate, but honestly people are not well informed enough to make decisions on their health. Not everyone can pick up those books that teach you how to be your own advocate. So is it wrong to push doctors to test their API patients for HBV and perhaps everything else? People don't need to contract HBV or unknowingly live with HBV. People don't need to get liver cancer and die because of HBV.
Well, at the moment there's just not enough funding and attention on HBV, just like everything else. I was speaking to my panel of expert and he told me they needed 3-5 million dollars to be able to put up billboards and posters. I read in an article that the organization in SF paid $10,000 for a 10 second air to play everyday for A SINGLE WEEK.
There's something not right about that. When I'm at bus stops, yeah sometimes I see a health awareness ads, but most of the time they're for cell phones or deodorants.
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