Welcome to “Journey to the Cure.” This is a web series that chronicles the progress at the Hepatitis B Foundation and Baruch S. Blumberg Institute towards finding the cure for hepatitis B.
In the four episode (part 1), Kristine Alarcon, MPH talks with Aejaz Sayeed, PhD, Assistant Professor of the Baruch S. Blumberg Institute. They talk about how hepatitis B is connected to liver cancer and doctors and scientists tell if a patient has cancer.
For any questions about hepatitis B, please email info@hepb.org.
The Hepatitis B Foundation is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to finding a cure and improving the lives of those affected by hepatitis B worldwide through research, education and patient advocacy. Visit us at www.hepb.org, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/hepbfoundation, on Twitter at @hepbfoundation, and our Blog at www.hepb.org/blog
Disclaimer: The information provided in this video is not intended to serve as medical advice or endorsement of any product. The Hepatitis B Foundation strongly recommends each person discuss this information and their questions with a qualified health care provider.
Welcome to “Journey to the Cure.” This is a web series that chronicles the progress at the Hepatitis B Foundation and Baruch S. Blumberg Institute towards finding the cure for hepatitis B.
In the third episode (part 2), Kristine Alarcon, MPH sits down with Maureen Kamischke, Social Media Manager for the Hepatitis B Foundation, to talk about her social media work at the Foundation. For any questions about hepatitis B, please email info@hepb.org.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this audio post is not intended to serve as medical advice of endorsement of any product. The Hepatitis B Foundation strongly recommends each person discuss this information and their questions with a qualified health care provider.
Edited by:
Kristine Alarcon, MPH
Special thanks:
Samantha Young
Music:
Modern – iMovie Library Collection
Script:
Welcome to “Journey to the Cure!” Every month, we’ll sit down with scientists from the Hepatitis B Foundationand the Baruch S. Blumberg Institute to talk to you about hepatitis B and efforts to find a cure for hepatitis B. There’s still a long way to go, but we’re here to walk you through our journey.
Kristine Alarcon, MPH:
You are our social media manager, and I know you have also shared your hepatitis B story. You can find Maureen’s story in our #justB campaign. But, can you tell me more about your work as a social media manager?
Maureen Kamischke: At the Foundation, we are very active on three outlets: Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. On Twitter, we have over 6,000 followers. We have a very active Facebook community. I would really encourage people to check out these outlets. It’s a great place to just check out what’s going on: drugs and the status of them on a daily basis. Basically, those are being updated every day.
Kristine Alarcon, MPH:
So, why is social media so important to conveying hepatitis B information?
Maureen Kamischke: So, I think social media is a great way to reach out to different audiences. I think it’s a great way to get the messages out. You know, you can put messages out; you can link back to different parts of our website that really need to be featured and highlighted so that there are areas of what people want to learn more about; and then of course, if you are really interested in the most recent articles in hepatitis B, it’s an easy enough to link out to those so that you are not doing the work for it.
Kristine Alarcon, MPH:
So, it’s just like another type of way to easily disseminate information and get it more widely available to everyone.
Maureen Kamischke: Yes.
Kristine Alarcon, MPH:
So, you’ve made so many connections across the globe in regard to hepatitis B partnerships, so what do you think the future looks like in the elimination of hepatitis B?
Maureen Kamischke: Well, I would have to say that on behalf of myself and all of our friends around the world, we’re all waiting for the cure, but until that time, there’s a lot that we can do. We have a lot of good treatments available. There’s a lot of information that needs to be disseminated. There are a lot of issues with stigma and discrimination. And hopefully, social media can help decrease the amount of stigma and discrimination by educating people, allowing them to learn more about the disease, more about the people that are living with it. It’s devastating the impact of the disease that it has on people, and this is a great way to reach out to them.
Kristine Alarcon, MPH:
Thank you so much for all your efforts. Be sure to join us on our next episode of “Journey to the Cure.” Just wanted to thank Maureen again for all of her time and all of her efforts in conveying such wonderful information around the world.
Welcome to “Journey to the Cure.” This is a web series that chronicles the progress at the Hepatitis B Foundation and Baruch S. Blumberg Institute towards finding the cure for hepatitis B.
In the second episode (part 2), Kristine Alarcon, MPH sits down with Chari Cohen, DrPH, MPH, Vice President of Public Health Programs of the Hepatitis B Foundation, to talk about public health research at the Hepatitis B Foundation.
For any questions about hepatitis B, please email info@hepb.org.
Disclaimer: The information provided in this audio post is not intended to serve as medical advice of endorsement of any product. The Hepatitis B Foundation strongly recommends each person discuss this information and their questions with a qualified health care provider.
Edited by:
Kristine Alarcon, MPH and Samantha Young
Music:
Modern – iMovie Library Collection
Script:
Welcome to Journey to the Cure! Every month, we’ll sit down with scientists from the Hepatitis B Foundation and the Baruch S. Blumberg Institute to talk to you about hepatitis B and efforts to find a cure for hepatitis B. There’s still a long way to go, but we’re here to walk you through our journey.
Kristine Alarcon, MPH:
In our last episode, Dr. Block was talking about how the Hep B Foundation is dedicated to public health research. Can you tell us more about that?
Chari Cohen, DrPH, MPH: One of our major goals is to get everyone in the United States – or in the world really – but primarily in the US, everyone who has hepatitis B should be aware of their diagnosis and should be able to access to care. In order to do that, we have to do research. We have to figure out what are the best ways to get people tested and into care. In order to do that, we have to first figure out why people aren’t getting tested now, what barriers are people facing, what challenges are people facing to get tested, and how can we help them overcome those challenges. Every time we do a public health program, we are also doing research, so we are collecting a lot of data. And then, we use the data to develop new programs, and we share it with others as well. We also collect information and data on prevalence, so looking at where some of the high risk and highly impacted communities are in the U.S. We will do testing ourselves. We’ll go into communities in Philadelphia, and we’ll do hepatitis B testing. Through that, we know which communities need more care.
Kristine Alarcon, MPH: What types of public health programs are you carrying out right now?
Chari Cohen, DrPH, MPH: We have a number of different programs right now. One is our Hep B United Philadelphia program, where we like to train the trainers. In Philadelphia, we’re training people who do health education; we’re training community leaders; and we’re helping them to learn about hep B, so that that they can go into high risk communities and teach other people about hep B. We’re also screening a lot of people. This year, we screened a little over 200 people for hepatitis B. When we find people to be infected, we link them into care. We’re also working on a new project, looking at the challenges that African immigrants face in the US in terms of hepatitis B testing. We’re trying to figure out what are the best ways to overcome those challenges and what are the best ways to get people tested and into care. And then, we have our #justB program, which is our national patient storytelling program, where people who have hep B or with family members who have hep B tell their stories and make videos, and they share how hep B has impacted their lives.
Kristine Alarcon, MPH: Thank you so much for joining us in this episode!
Welcome to “Journey to the Cure” This is a web series that chronicles the progress at the Hepatitis B Foundation and Baruch S. Blumberg Institute towards finding the cure for hepatitis B.
In the first episode (part 2), Kristine Alarcon, MPH sits down with Timothy Block, PhD, President and Co-Founder of the Hepatitis B Foundation, to talk about what a hepatitis B cure could look like in the future.
For any questions about hepatitis B, please email info@hepb.org
Disclaimer: The information provided in this audio post is not intended to serve as medical advice or endorsement of any product. The Hepatitis B Foundation strongly recommends each person discuss this information and their questions with a qualified health care provider.
Special Thanks:
Samantha Young
Music:
Modern – iMovie Library Collection
Script:
Welcome to Journey to the Cure! Every month, we’ll sit down with scientists from the Hepatitis B Foundation and the Baruch S. Blumberg Institute to talk to you about hepatitis B and efforts to find a cure for hepatitis B. There’s still a long way to go, but we’re here to walk you through our journey.
Timothy Block, PhD:
The Hepatitis B Foundation is now largely devoted to basically outreach and what I call human services or being there for people. We wanted, however, to keep pressure on research communities – to make sure there was a research organization. The Hepatitis B Foundation created a second non-profit organization, originally called the IHVR, renamed in Dr. Blumberg’s honor after he passed away; and that’s the Baruch S. Blumberg Institute. And that’s a group of research scientists.
Kristine Alarcon, MPH:
What do we need in order to find a cure for hepatitis B?
Timothy Block, PhD:
Well, we need more research. We need focused research and the community’s kind of coming together with a consensus. The Hepatitis B Foundation organized that workshop, which we published research priorities. We call it the “Roadmap to a Cure.” The more scholarly, conservative title for that is a research agenda- research priorities. We believe that if you follow that roadmap or you follow those lists, we will be most likely- I don’t want promise anything- but we will most likely to find if not a cure, transformational new medicines. But, I’m hopeful that they’ll be one form of cure. So you follow that roadmap, and we should get there.
Kristine Alarcon, MPH: Thank you so much. This has been very insightful on what it looks like for the cure in the future. Thank you again for joining us.
Timothy Block, PhD:
Thank you again so much for the opportunity and what I want the listeners to know that the Hepatitis B Foundation is at the forefront of this work. We were there 27 years ago. We were there through the times when hepatitis B was being forgotten. The cure for hepatitis C has brought new focus on the problem of hepatitis and we were- and we’re here now. We’re sitting in an office that is in a building that has the Hepatitis B Foundation outreach and advocacy staff of nurses and public health professionals. We’re also here with as I said with 100 scientists, who are focused on looking for a cure for hepatitis B. We’re working for the commercial community, working with the academic community. But we’re here stimulating the research, promoting workshops, promoting seminars, but also doing our own research. So I hope that you keep that in mind and know that there are- there are a group of people who remain very focused on it.
Kristine Alarcon, MPH:
Thank you so much for joining us and we’ll see you on the next episode.
In the first episode (part 1), Kristine Alarcon, MPH sits down with Timothy Block, PhD, President and Co-Founder of the Hepatitis B Foundation, to talk about the basics of hepatitis B.
For any questions about hepatitis B, please email info@hepb.org
The Hepatitis B Foundation is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to finding a cure and improving the lives of those affected by hepatitis B worldwide through research, education and patient advocacy. Visit us at www.hepb.org, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/hepbfoundation, on Twitter at twitter@hepbfoundation, and our Blog at www.hepb.org/blog
Disclaimer: The information provided in this video is not intended to serve as medical advice or endorsement of any product. The Hepatitis B Foundation strongly recommends each person discuss this information and their questions with a qualified health care provider.
