A new social marketing campaign is urging families from Chinese and Vietnamese backgrounds to get tested for chronic hepatitis B.
Delivered by the Multicultural Health & Support Service (MHSS) and Cancer Council Victoria, the campaign draws on cultural understandings of health and hepatitis B to promote testing and treatment.
The situation
Around 160,000 people are currently living with hepatitis B in Australia: mostly families with a history of migration from countries where the virus is common. Transmission often occurs at birth or early childhood, and one in three people with a chronic infection don't know that they have the virus. These people miss out on the opportunity to get tested, monitored and treated to prevent cirrhosis or liver cancer, while their families miss out on the opportunity to get tested and vaccinated.
‘Every family's responsibility'
The social marketing campaign encourages families to seek testing and appropriate follow-up from their GPs. MHSS conducted extensive focus testing to explore cultural meanings, beliefs and knowledge of health and hepatitis B.
The campaign will run in Vietnamese, Mandarin and Cantonese, under the slogan ‘Fighting hepatitis B is every family's responsibility'. It includes three major activities:
Advertising and editorial
A four-part radio narrative, on SBS Radio in three languages, tells the story of a family affected by hepatitis B. A grandmother has just lost her husband to liver cancer, and wants her family and community to get tested. Her son finds out he has the virus, enabling messages about treatment, getting his family vaccinated and removing stigma within his community.
Interviews and editorial features will also appear in Chinese and Vietnamese media in Melbourne.
Patient information cards
Information cards are available from chemists in St Albans, Footscray, Richmond, Box Hill and Springvale, as well as in ethnic newspapers. The card enables patients to attend their own doctors and request the appropriate tests for hepatitis B.
Lunar calendars
A2 calendars were distributed at Chinese and Vietnamese new year festivals and folded into newspapers. Designed around themes of harmony and family unity, these calendars will remain on display year-round in 42,000 homes - reinforcing key messages about testing, monitoring and vaccination.
Next steps
MHSS is currently seeking funding to extend the campaign in Victoria and undertake an independent evaluation of campaign materials. For more information contact Daniel Reeders on (03) 9342 9713.
Funding support
The project is a partnership with the Cancer Council Victoria, who has funded focus testing and development of a patient information card.
We also gratefully acknowledge unrestricted educational grants to MHSS from Gilead Sciences and Bristol-Myers Squibb, used for the social marketing campaign activities and a part-time project worker position.