Using survey results regarding hepatitis B knowledge, community awareness and testing behavior among Asians to improve the San Francisco Hep B Free campaign.

Asians are disproportionately affected by chronic hepatitis B (HBV) infection and its fatal consequences. The Hep B Free campaign was launched to eliminate HBV in San Francisco by increasing awareness, testing, vaccination and linkage to care. The campaign conducted 306 street intercept and telephone interviews of San Francisco Asians to assess current levels of HBV knowledge, testing behaviors and effectiveness of existing campaign media materials.

San Francisco hep B free: a grassroots community coalition to prevent hepatitis B and liver cancer.

Chronic hepatitis B is the leading cause of liver cancer and the largest health disparity between Asian/Pacific Islanders (APIs) and the general US population. The Hep B Free model was launched to eliminate hepatitis B infection by increasing hepatitis B awareness, testing, vaccination, and treatment among APIs by building a broad, community-wide coalition. The San Francisco Hep B Free campaign is a diverse public/private collaboration unifying the API community, health care system, policy makers, businesses, and the general public in San Francisco, California.

Logistics of community smallpox control through contact tracing and ring vaccination: a stochastic network model.

Background: Previous smallpox ring vaccination models based on contact tracing over a network suggest that ring vaccination would be effective, but have not explicitly included response logistics and limited numbers of vaccinators.

Methods: We developed a continuous-time stochastic simulation of smallpox transmission, including network structure, post-exposure vaccination, vaccination of contacts of contacts, limited response capacity, heterogeneity in symptoms and infectiousness, vaccination prior to the discontinuation of routine vaccination, more rapid diagnosis due to public awareness, surveillance of asymptomatic contacts, and isolation of cases.

Results: We found that even in cases of very rapidly spreading smallpox, ring vaccination (when coupled with surveillance) is sufficient in most cases to eliminate smallpox quickly, assuming that 95% of household contacts are traced, 80% of workplace or social contacts are traced, and no casual contacts are traced, and that in most cases the ability to trace 1-5 individuals per day per index case is sufficient.

Risks of serious complications and death from smallpox vaccination: a systematic review of the United States experience, 1963-1968.

Background: The United States (US) has re-instituted smallpox vaccinations to prepare for an intentional release of the smallpox virus into the civilian population. In an outbreak, people of all ages will be vaccinated. To prepare for the impact of large-scale ring and mass vaccinations, we conducted a systematic review of the complication and mortality risks of smallpox vaccination.