CDC Recommends All Adults Get Tested for Hepatitis B

has decreased significantly in the last 30 years, the Office of Minority Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says it is still a problem for African Americans.

By Stacy M. Brown NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent@StacyBrownMedia

The U.S. Centers for Control and Prevention have issued a new recommendation urging all adults to receive screening for hepatitis B at least once in their lifetime.

The agency describes hepatitis B (HBV) as a liver infection caused by the HBV virus. It can progress to liver cancer and other serious illnesses.

CDC officials said as many as 2.4 million people live with HBV, and most might not know they have it. A severe infection could lead to chronic HBV, which could increase a person’s risk of getting cancer or cirrhosis.

Further, the CDC said those diagnosed with chronic or long-term HBV are up to 85% more likely to succumb to an early death.

“Chronic HBV infection can lead to substantial morbidity and mortality but is detectable before the development of severe liver disease using reliable and inexpensive screening tests,” CDC officials stated.

Even though the number of people with HBV has decreased significantly in the last 30 years, the Office of Minority Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says it is still a problem for African Americans.

That office reported that, in 2020, nonHispanic blacks would be 1.4 times more likely to die from viral hepatitis than nonHispanic whites.

Also, non-Hispanic blacks were almost twice as likely to die from hepatitis C as white individuals.

Further, while having comparable case rates for HBV in 2020, non-Hispanic blacks were 2.5 times more likely to die from HBV than non-Hispanic whites. Medical officials noted that HBV spreads through contact with infected blood or bodily fluids, which can occur through sex, injecting drugs, or during pregnancy or delivery.

The CDC previously issued a recommendation in 2008, when it urged testing for high-risk individuals. In its most recent recommendation, the agency said that adults over 18 must be tested at least once.

The agency declared that pregnant individuals should also undergo screening during each pregnancy, regardless of whether they’ve received a vaccine or have been previously tested. Additionally, incarcerated individuals, those with multiple sex partners, or people with a history of hepatitis C should test periodically, the CDC said.

The agency warned that symptoms of acute HBV could include fever, fatigue, abdominal pain, dark urine, and jaundice. Symptoms could take several months or longer to present and last for months.

The CDC’s latest report further notes the following:

• It’s estimated more than half of people who have the hepatitis B virus (HBV) don’t know they’re infected. Without treatment and monitoring, HBV infection can lead to deadly health outcomes, including liver damage and liver cancer.

• The report updates and expands previous guidelines for HBV screening and testing by recommending screening for all U.S. adults and expanding continual periodic risk-based testing to include more groups, activities, exposures, and conditions.

• Providers should implement the new CDC hepatitis B screening and testing recommendations to ensure all adults are screened for HBV infection with the triple-panel at least once in their lifetimes and that people who are not vaccinated for hepatitis B – but are at increased risk of HBV infection – receive periodic testing.

“Although a curative treatment is not yet available, early diagnosis and treatment of chronic HBV infections reduce the risk for cirrhosis, liver cancer, and death,” CDC officials noted in the report.

“Along with vaccination strategies, universal screening of adults and appropriate testing of persons at increased risk for HBV infection will improve health outcomes, reduce the prevalence of HBV infection in the United States, and advance viral hepatitis elimination goals.”

Con’t

Looks Back To Focus

ter’s hair before braiding it.

As women responded, the project became collaborative, Douglas remembered. Mothers brought along their young children. Subjects in the film recommended their friends. People made music suggestions. At one point early on, almost a dozen women sat together around a table talking about their choice to go natural. What started as a single thesis idea became an entire community.

“It was this really amazing community of Black women that wanted to get this project done,” she said. Within it, she credits some of her own family members, including her aunt Lily and late father. Following the film, she stayed in touch with a few of the women, including an aunt of hers who lives in Connecticut and has long worn her hair natural. Subject Zakiya Carr, who Douglas documents as she has her head shaved, has become a champion of the film in her own work on Afro-Latinidad. She is currently working to get the film translated into Spanish, she said.

Two and a half decades later, she’s struck by how relevant the film still feels. In the United States, the C.R.O.W.N. (Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair) Act, barring discrimination against natural hair, only became a movement in 2019, and came to Connecticut two years ago. She closely follows the growing number of lawsuits that point to a link between hair relaxer and certain reproductive cancers. And when she looks around, she said, she still sees an overwhelming bent towards relaxed styles over natural hair.

“We’ve internalized this thing about hating our natural hair,” she said. “Our aunts, our moms, our family members, even some Black men. And then we get discriminated against from the outside community.”

She is also still very moved by the subject, Douglas said—and intends to build on it. Currently, she’s raising funds for a national HBCU and community tour of Nappy, a screening and fundraiser for which took place last Sunday at the Kellogg Environmental Center. In New Haven, she said, locations for the film might include an event at the Dixwell Community Q House or Stetson Branch Library.

She also doesn’t see the subject as done, she said. She still wants to use photography and film to tell the hairstories of Black women and alopecia, Afro-Latinidad, Black men’s feelings on Black women’s hair, and documentary filmmaking on the African continent. A quarter of a century after the film first made its debut, she said, the ideas are still coming.

“When it [the film] first came out, like the first 10 or 15 years, I was very very excited about it,” she said. “So now, I just have to keep that excitement up by constantly showing the work. Making new work, showing it in different places, and just being out there in the public.”

Yale School Of Music Ellington Jazz Series Presents

EPITAPH: 100 YEARS OF MINGUS

APRIL 2, 2023 | 2 P.M. | WOOLSEY HALL

In celebration of Charles Mingus’ 100th birthday, the Ellington Jazz Series presents the revered Mingus Big Band, with Grammy Award-winning saxophonist, YSM Lecturer in Jazz, and Director of the Yale Jazz Ensembles Wayne Escoffery and Yale students, in a performance, conducted by Escoffery and trombonist Frank Lacy, of Mingus’ idiosyncratic jazz-orchestra epic, Epitaph. This rarely performed, enigmatic work reflects the genius of its composer while defying all categorization and offers the world an experience of the man himself and of the ideas that filled him.

Tickets from $23, students $10 | music-tickets.yale.edu