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Abstract #153508

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Lorren D. Sandt, Caring Ambassadors Hepatitis C Program, 604 East 16th Street, Suite 201, Vancouver, WA 98663, 360-816-4186, lorren@hepcchallenge.org and Tina M. St. John, MD, Caring Ambassadors Program, Inc., 604 East 16th Street, Suite 201, Vancouver, WA 98663.

Hepatitis C is the most common, chronic blood-borne viral infection in the United States. The number of Americans currently infected is conservatively estimated to be 3-times the number infected with HIV. Yet to date, some 18 years after the hepatitis C virus was first isolated and 16 years since the breadth of the epidemic was first recognized in the U.S., the national public health response to hepatitis C is virtually non-existent.

In 1998, the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee held a hearing ironically and prophetically entitled, “Hepatitis C: Silent Epidemic, Mute Public Health Response.” Former Surgeon General Koop – the man who spearheaded the federal HIV campaign - testified with a stark warning about hepatitis C. “We are at the edge of a very significant public health challenge - not unlike the AIDS epidemic…. that is an undisputed threat to the public health.” The Committee recommendations supported Dr. Koop's call to action, but it is a call that remains largely unheeded.

The gross mismatch between the disease burden of hepatitis C in the U.S. and the astonishingly limited national public health response defy logic, and the very ethical and scientific principles that are the foundation of all public health systems. The historic precedence for the current status of the hepatitis C epidemic including the political, social, and economic factors, and the ethical issues raised by the continued status of the crisis as “the silent epidemic” will be addressed in the presentation.

Learning Objectives:

• Articulate the prevalence of hepatitis C in the U.S.
• Develop an understanding of the history-to-date of the federal response (and lack of response) to the hepatitis C epidemic
• Assess the need for public health intervention in the hepatitis C crisis according to fundamental principles of infectious disease control and prevention
• Articulate the ethical issues in the limited public health response to the hepatitis C epidemic
• Assess the roles of governmental, public, and private sector politics in the current level of public health responsiveness to the hepatitis C epidemic
• Discuss active steps public health practitioners can take to encourage an ethically responsible and scientifically sound national public health response to hepatitis C control and prevention

Keywords: Hepatitis C, Chronic Diseases

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No
Any institutionally-contracted trials related to this submission?

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

• Slides (pdf) or Handout