Community Project Funding/Congressionally Directed Spending - Non-Construction - Pennsylvania is one of the states that is most highly impacted by the viral hepatitis epidemic in the U.S. In Pennsylvania, especially the greater Philadelphia region, 50,000 people are living with chronic hepatitis B, only 10-15% have been diagnosed, and rates of acute hepatitis B have increased over 150% in the past three years. This epidemic primarily impacts underserved communities of color and left untreated, 1 in 4 individuals will die prematurely of liver cancer or cirrhosis. There is a PA Viral Hepatitis Elimination Plan, but until now, no funds to implement it. This program will build public health infrastructure and partnerships to develop sustainable efforts to improve hepatitis B awareness, screening, and linkage to care and treatment, leading to elimination of hepatitis B in Pennsylvania. This program will centralize hepatitis B-elimination efforts and provide expert resources, advice, training, capacity building and technical assistance for state and local health departments, social service organizations, and community health providers on how to best prevent, treat and control hepatitis B and to increase the rate of adult vaccination for hepatitis B. This project will use four strategies to improve public health capacity: ECHO tele-mentoring to provide free hepatitis B training to medical providers; training and technical assistance programming for community-based organizations serving Asian American, African immigrant and harm reduction communities; regional training and engagement via a public health Summit; and systems-level integration of hepatitis B screening and vaccination using policy and practice change along with electronic health records. A key project strategy is our Community Advisory Board (CAB), consisting of public health professionals, health department staff, clinicians, patients and community leaders, pharmacists, academic leaders, scientists and social service providers. The CAB will ensure that the project reflects the needs of the communities served. This program will foster collaboration and provide infrastructure and resources necessary to see progress towards eliminating hepatitis B and saving lives in Pennsylvania. We will build public health infrastructure to decrease heath disparities and improve health access and outcomes in underserved, disparately impacted communities of color. Additionally, the built infrastructure can be leveraged to provide surge capacity that will enable us to reach underserved minority communities efficiently and effectively in the event of a future public health disaster event, such as the COVID-19 epidemic. The results will also reach farther than the confines of PA - what we learn from this project will be used to model similar efforts throughout the U.S.
