Hello All,
Wanted to share this piece of news that President Obama recognized hepatitis B as Asian health disparity that needs to be addressed. This is exciting news! Article here: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iFE0ZoXjhEYzTUjno4-pqLK3F_dQAnd you can catch the actual video from the White House website here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/video/The-President-Observes-Diwali/ Congressman Mike Honda also just reintroduced a bill to address viral hepatitis (the Viral Hepatitis and Liver Cancer Prevention and Control Act of 2009 HR 3974).
Large strides for hepatitis B advocacy! Best, Amy
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Hello Everyone, Read a great NPR transcript of Congressmen Judy Chu and Mike Honda on healthcare reform. Judy Chu mentions hepatitis B and it's importance in heatlhcare reform for Asian and Pacific Islanders. Especially pertinent since under our current healthcare program, those with pre-existing conditions are often denied healthcare. My own mother suffers from this problem due to her chronic hep B infection, so it is great to hear a politicion speaking out about this isue. http://www.apaforprogress.org/asian-american-democrats-discuss-healthcare-npr-transcript Let me know what your thoughts are! Amy
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Hello Reader, Thanks for reading today. (From August 18th and 20th - almost there!) Hepatitis B and the Jade Ribbon Campaign
The past two days have been meeting days, and I have had the opportunity to work some really great people. Of note, today, I was invited to the Vietnamese Reach for Health Coalition meeting by Ching Wong, and was impressed by the dedication and influence of many of those who were in the room. The people there are all incredibly committed to improving the lives of those in their communities, and I really want to express how much it inspired me today to see them all in that room. There were familiar faces, but there were many new ones, and I’m looking forward to learning more about what they do and how the ALC can partner with them to reach the Vietnamese community. Also worked on some Jade Ribbon Campaign design ideas for a well-known Asian bakery on the west coast, so hopefully the product ideas will be inspiring to them! Will share when things are more finalized. Today, in the office, we took some cute pictures of our Jade Ribbon Campaign cows (we do one animal each year in accordance to the Chinese Zodiac – and this year is the ox). I thought you’d enjoy seeing them. They were actually inspired through a cow twitpic contest – thanks to CL and TC for rounding up the cows for these photos:  Jade Ribbon Campaign Cows and the Jade Ribbon!  Jade Ribbon Campaign Cows encircling the Jade Ribbon Asian Liver Center / Jade Ribbon Campaign Update
Finally got around to uploading the online Jade Ribbon Youth Council 2009-2010 application onto the Asian Liver Center website. I’m excited for what this year’s 15-person high school council will come up with to raise awareness about hepatitis B. Finally post-processed the Youth Leadership Conference 2009 photos today. Had the opportunity to teach TC, AC, and CL a little post-processing in Photoshop – I always like to get people Photoshop savvy! Thx to TC and AC for helping me with the last set of photos. And, TC has been a great help in uploading the team videos. I’m looking to upload all those on the ALC website tomorrow. Thank you for reading! Amy
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Hello Readers! Today is a post about Filipino Outreach and the Jade Ribbon Campaign bag at 99 Ranch Market: (From August 16, 2009) Hepatitis B Outreach
Today I spoke at Our Lady Mercy Church in Daly City with parishoners about hepatitis B and liver cancer. Usually SC gives these talks, so it was a new experience. I usually do volunteer training or small group education, so this was exciting for me. NT and I will need to sit down and rethink how to drive more people to the event since the turnout was less than we had expected, especially with pastor encouragment and a large placement in the bulletin. One thing we didn’t have going for us was the location of the education / screening. Location is so key. Hopefully we can partner with an organization so we can offer light refreshments – people are always attracted to food! On a separate note, I’m really proud of NT and TC, they’re working very hard to spearhead our outreach into the Filipino and Korean communities, and it’s great. Hopefully I can nudge them to be more interactive with the participants and volunteers since it really is their show, and everyone is really looking to them to set the tone for how they should act and how comfortable they feel. Additionally, I’m looking forward to UP’s events in September for the Vietnamese community, and having her see her work come to fruition. Also had a chance to chat with three YLC 2009 alumni, and it was really heartening to hear of their enthusiasm to start a high school club in Davis, CA. How exciting! Youth are fantastic. I also can’t believe summer internships are ending soon! How sad! I will definitely miss this intern group. Jade Ribbon Campaign
After I had the chance to eat lumpias from Goldilocks (a well-known Filipino food place), I went in search of it; however, I was thrawted because I did not have an exact address and I was sans phone. However, I did stumble upon Daly City’s 99 Ranch Market and decided to grab some groceries and dinner there. As I was there, I bought a Jade Ribbon Bag (yes, I know, I’m blantantly trying to promote the campaign) and it was super useful for the groceries I bought. It was neat, because when I was at Shang Kee Bakery, I placed the buns and egg tarts I got there into the bag, and a lady was eyeing how much I could fit in there. Hopefully she gets one too! The Jade Ribbon reusable bag sale is ending on Aug. 31st, so I need to think of another way to push so people buy in to the idea of using a sustainable bag. If you have any thoughts, let me know. Thank you for reading! Amy
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Hello! (From Aug. 14, 2009) Taking care of some post-YLC things. Can’t wait to see the results from the pre and post surveys from the students. I enjoyed reading through the intern and JRYC feedback; it was very helpful to read through everyone’s candid take on how YLC was organized. I think the conference is getting better and better each year, and I can’t wait to see what will happen at the 8th Annual YLC. Here’s me at the CDC’s 3rd Annual National Conference on Health Communication, Marketing, and Media in front of my poster on the YLC. As mentioned in my previous post, many people were interested in replicating the program, so if you would like to see any of our materials, let me know. We are more than happy to share.  Me in front of my poster on Youth Leadership Conference. I’ll post up pictures from YLC when I get PD’s cd of photos. We have some from our own camera, but alas, we’re not the best photographers. I’ll try and sift through some of them and post them soon. I’m really excited to share all the great speakers, challenges, and everything with all of you. I have some neat ideas for next year too – which include having a webinar that is open to everyone around the world, a blogging post at the end of the day, and live recording of students’ thoughts – so we’ll see where that goes. I realize that I didn’t say anything about Miss Asian America Pageant 2009! It was a great event, and we were able to raise $1700+ for the Jade Ribbon Campaign. ST made me a Jade Ribbon dress (I still have yet to get a picture of me wearing it!), and it was a HUGE hit. RL and the MAA 2008 Queen and court were helpful with encouraging pageant attendees to support the Jade Ribbon Campaign. I even had a chance to speak with the Sugar Bowl Bakery CEO and his wife again! They are incredibly sweet (no pun intended!). CT, SW, and DC were very helpful, and I’m very indebted to them for coming out to help. The entire experience was pretty tiring since I literally ran from the end of YLC to MAA, but I’m glad I went. Thanks for reading,
Amy
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Hello Readers! Apologies about the long haitus from blogging on EastVillagers. I actually have my personal blog at http://missamyyu.wordpress.com, and have been blogging about my ALC adventures and lessons learned there. However, I'll be sharing some of my older posts here, and keep you all updated with what is going on with ALC outreach. Thank you for reading, and do let me know if you're interested in ALC outreach opportunities. One of my interns Nicole Tantoco has been working hard with hepatitis B outreach education in the Filipino community. She was able to get an article written on GMANews.TV, a prominent Filipino news community, to write an article on hepatitis B. It’s great! And I really like the little green box summary on the right. Great job, Nicole. Also, received disturbing news that Chinese authorities raided the office of the Beijing non-governmental organization YiRenPing which is fights hepatitis B discrimination in China. Read the article HERE. It is really frustrating to hear about this. I’m interested in learning more about the details of the raid and learning about the exact reason for the confiscation of a legal guide describing how to fight hepatitis B discrimination. The YiRenPeng recently published a report on multinational corporations and Chinese companies that used pre-hiring / firing hepatitis B practices, and they help to raise awareness about hepatitis B and dispell misconceptions about its transmission (which is ONLY through blood contact, NOT through food!). Thank you very much for reading. Best, Amy Disclosure: I work for the Asian Liver Center at Stanford University, the first non-profit organization to address the high incidence of hepatitis B and liver cancer in the Asian and Pacific Islander communities; however, the opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and may not necessarily reflect that of the Asian Liver Center or Stanford University.
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Quick entry today about how much I love the ALC Family. Today I held a long-overdue training session, and the turn out was fantastic! Each time I run a training session, I am reminded about how much I enjoy connecting with people and just talking to them. It's that connection through outreach that I enjoy so much. I changed the training slides and format quite a bit from my previous slide set to make it more fun and interactive. I realized that what I need to be doing at these training sessions is to 1) give the facts to those attending, 2) give them an idea of the breadth of opportunities they have to contribute to the Jade Ribbon Campaign, and most importantly, 3) teach them how to promote awareness about hepatitis B. I was lacking the teaching people how to promote part in my previous trainings. In a way, what we are doing when we try to educate others about hepatitis B and liver cancer is bascially marketing and getting people to buy-in. As educators, we have to be able to gain someone's attention and then make them care to change their behavior. So, it was a lot of fun to do a mini public speaking discussion. It certainly brought out some laughs and got people comfortable. Hopefully, this will better equip our volunteers with how to approach people at our outreach events – it’s certainly a skill that I have had to cultivate over the years, and it’s an important skill to continue to work on. I was so impressed by everyone’s energy and ethusiasm after the training session and their inspiration to come out to various events – some even asked me about project ideas! Next training session will be in August, and I hope to see some of you there! (If you're interested, email the ALC Volunteer Coordinator at alcvolunteers@gmail.com). Thanks for reading! Amy
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Hi All, Putting on my corporate hepatitis B hat now: General Electric has done some fantastic work with hepatitis B in their China sector by offering free, voluntary HBV vaccination to all its employees. They give a good cost-effective analysis, so that's super exciting. The mention about hep B being transmitted by saliva is NOT true (only through blood contact!!!), but other than that, this is a really exciting step for the corporate world and their role in ensuring the health and protection of their employees. Full article here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/17210493/How-to-Reduce-Hepatitis-B-in-the-Workplace-JulAug-2009-CBR Short post today as I have some action items to finish up. Let me know if you'd like me to post on anything in particular! :) Thanks for reading,
Amy
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Quick post today. Hope people are excited to hear about how 99 Ranch Market is going to launch a Jade Ribbon Campaign reusable grocery bag. It's fantastic that they're taking a leadership role in creating sustainable AND healthy communities. The in-store flyer will be sporting the promoting ad starting TOMORROW. You can check it out here until then! Been working busily on getting the press release done along with the in-store posters and banner. Have to start contacting ethnic media starting Monday. We're hoping to have the continued support of World Journal, Sing Tao Radio and Newspaper, Viet Tribune, and KTSF. We're also inviting SBTN, Viet Daily, and the Korea Times. We hope to make this event really big, so if you're free on Friday, July 24th, come out to the Cupertino 99 Ranch at 3 PM!! Come support the Jade Ribbon Campaign!! And on side note: community ethnic outreach is going along really well. I'm really proud of my interns Tim, Nicole, and Uyen. They are doing a fantastic job in outreaching into the Korean, Filipino, and Vietnamese community. I'll blog more about their successes at a later time. Alright, until next time! P.S. Catch me on twitter @missamyyu!
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Some good progress made today at the ALC! The to-do list grows exponentially, but there’s always work to be done at a non-profit. And yes, this is a subtle hint that we’re always looking for dedicated and motivated volunteers like YOU. :) In fact, I have a neat story about a future volunteer named R. here. He saw one of our Jade Ribbon Youth Council (JRYC)’s Peter and the Wolf adaptation story-time events at a library and became interested in helping raising awareness about hep B. (How inspiring – this is outreach’s success in effect. Great job, JRYC 2008-2009!!) R. dropped by the office today to discuss how he was interested in the getting involved in the community. He’ll be coming to our training session next week – stay tuned for the date; will be posting tomorrow. ALC volunteers are the best! And another shout out to the JRYC: one of my academic year interns Sylvia is currently working with the Hmong in Oregon to adapt the Peter and the Wolf adaptation to introduce hepatitis B testing and vaccination to the Hmong in Oregon. I’m looking forward to hearing about how this project goes. Ethnic community outreach is going along steadily. Vietnamese outreach is coming along, and I’m excited about the great work that U. is doing. She’s getting into the Viet community in ways that I haven’t been able to: speaking with Vietnamese church deacons, Vietnamese temple leaders, and finding contacts for the Vietnamese mobile home community. She’s getting her feet wet with Vietnamese hep B outreach at a fair on Sunday, July 19th. She needs volunteers, so let us know if you’re free! Korean and Filipino outreach is coming along as well. N. learned that for the Filipino churches, it’s good to speak with the archbishop of the church to get better buy-in and make sure that things are okay to do. The new cultural things I am learning is always really enlightening, and I hope will make me a good doctor one day. Two Korean church screenings are coming up on the 19th and 26th, so join us if you’re interested. And last update, and perhaps the most pressing one from my end: Jade Ribbon Campaign reusable grocery bag at 99 Ranch Market. Today marked a day of good progress for the press conference on July 24th at the Cupertino store. If you’re like me, when you go shopping at the Asian grocery stores, I always find myself with a ton of groceries and not enough bag space in my other reusable bags. This bag can fit my bok choy, napa, my tub of lychee jelly snacks, bags of dumplings, and a pint of soy milk. Oh, and several of those delicious, but oh-so-bad-for-you, coconut butter cookies. And if you’re not using it for groceries, it’s great for laundry. :p But back to the press conference, we’ve confirmed Queen Louisa from Miss Asian America and hopefully her court can come for the festivities. The 99 Ranch Market in-store ads will be boasting the bags ($2 donation only!) starting this Friday, so make sure you pick one up! Plus, the register folks will be wearing our new “Join Us: Jade Ribbon Campaign” buttons (it looks like “Join In! Join Us”) I’ll start posting pictures of all these exciting things soon, so stay tuned. Remember, this is just a small, small snapshot of what goes on at the center, and I hope that you’ll join us in eradicating hepatitis B and liver cancer. Remember, YOU, too can save lives. So, join in and join us in raising awareness about hepatitis B!
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Today was a pretty busy day. Had intern meeting in the morning where our current summer 2009 interns updated each other on what their progress is in their respective projects. It is really fantastic to see them grow throughout the summer and to hear about their achievements. I am really enjoying this summer’s intern projects because I think they will all get a lot out of this summer. Our summer interns range from undergraduates to PhD students to MPH students to medical school students. And you know what? They’re all collaborating to effect positive impact on a large scale. It’s really heartening to think that what they will be accomplishing this summer will help to set the foundation of a future high school student’s future or the training of nurses in the Philippines. Furthermore, we’ve incorporated a research journal club to the intern program so that students can learn how to truly evaluate the outreach in which they are engaging. I’m getting really excited to see the Filipino, Korean, and Vietnamese outreach events coming toward the end of July and into August. Make sure to join the ALC volunteers (email alcvolunteers@gmail.com) if you’re interested in getting some experience in the ethnic communities. I’ve been working on the Ranch 99, Miss Asia America, and Jade Ribbon Campaign press conference (July 24th) off the ground with the posters, buttons, and logistical things. It is very exciting to think that we’ll be able to bring these various leaders in the community together to promote healthy food, healthy living, and healthy communities. I can’t wait to see YOU out there carrying a Jade Ribbon Campaign reusable bag to save lives and save the earth. The interns will also be at the press conference, this being one of their first outreach experiences. Make sure to let your friends know about the kickoff so you can come out and support the fight against hepatitis B. On another note, you’ll be seeing the ALC at the Google Wellness Fairs in San Francisco and San Bruno. These are such GREAT events that Google Benefits offers their employees, and I am very grateful that we’ve been asked to attend at these satellites after the successful Mountain View fairs. They had some great chocolate pudding made out of avocados that day! Youth Leadership Conference is definitely gearing up – it’s less than a month away! Christine (the Youth Leadership Conference intern) and I spent the holiday weekend looking more into the social media world and how we can make this year’s team challenge very exciting and applicable to all our students. Plus, this year we’ll be including a resume workshop and a public speaking class to prepare our students for college and future careers. I’m really looking forward to all the students who will be flooding the campus on August 5th. I hope they’re as excited as I am! If you have any neat outreach ideas or want to talk about volunteer opportunities, please feel free to email me. :)
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Hello All! Just a mini update on the world of the ALC Outreach Coordinator's projects. We're doing quite a bit at the center, and I think it'd be great to start logging what exciting things are coming up. If you're interested in joining in on any projects, shoot me an email or message me. 1) National Youth Leadership Forum: I went to Berkeley today to speak to conference participants about the work I do at the ALC. These high school students were really excited to hear about the good they can do through public health, and were really receptive to learning more about hepatitis B and what they can do at their home. One girl even asked if she send brochures to the clinic back home where there's a large Hmong population! We'll need to get that Hmong translation up and running soon. Remember - all our educational materials are FREE of charge and can be shipped anywhere. 2) Preparing for Jade Ribbon Campaign ReUsable Bag Kick Off (Friday, July 24th): We're starting to gear up for the press conference / kick-off of the Jade Ribbon Campaign Reusable bag. Make sure you check out the Ranch 99 ad this upcoming Friday! And what's great is that this collaboration between Ranch 99, Miss Asia America, and the ALC really demonstrates the solidarity and commitment these groups have to promoting the health of the Asian community. I'm really looking forward to this event! More details to come. 3) Googlers Unite: We've been invited to attend two more Goolge Wellness Fairs to educate Googlers about hepatitis B and raise awareness. it's great that Google has been very supportive of our efforts, and we look forward to launching a larger awareness campaign soon. 4) Cisco Leads the Way: We launched our first education awareness campaign with Cisco, and had great success. They're doing such a great job that HR is looking into making sure that there is no discrimination in China satellites! 5) Low-cost Vaccination and Screenings in San Jose: We'll be having our next vaccination and screening event on July 18, 2009 at the AACI location (2400 Moorpark Avenue, San Jose, CA). Volunteers are always needed, and if you want to have some experience with cultural competency, let me know. :) Lots more to come: Korean Church Screenings, Miss Asia America Pageant, and our Youth Leadership Conference are all around the corner!! Until next time, Amy
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