The Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations (AAPCHO) co-hosted a World TB Day webinar for TB elimination partners and public health TB program staff entitled The Tuberculosis Epidemic: Impact in California and Strategies to Reach Elimination on April 8th.
The meeting opened with introductions from co-host representatives, the current CTCA President and Orange County TB Program Manager Angelito Bravo, MD, and Joe Lee the Director of Strategic Initiatives and Partnerships at AAPCHO. For our first presentation, we heard from Jackie Cuen, CTCA TB Patient Peer Support Navigator, as she shared her story of TB diagnosis and treatment in San Diego County. After we heard from Jackie, we heard about the number and distribution of TB cases in California in 2020.
AAPCHO representative, Joe Lee, provided a comprehensive overview of their TB elimination strategies and efforts, explaining that AAPCHO provides advocacy, collaboration, and leadership to drive health equity for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders (AANHPI) who have been marginalized and minoritized. AAPCHO is addressing TB because, nationwide, nearly 35% of all TB cases reported each year in the U.S. are among the AANHPI communities. TB impacts the over 50 ethnic subgroups with more than 100 languages spoken differently. AAPCHO is closely examining which subgroups are most disproportionately impacted to better target their enhanced prevention services. AAPCHO created the TB Elimination Alliance (TEA), a coalition funded by the CDC to eliminate TB and LTBI inequities among AANHPI populations, through education, awareness raising, innovation to achieve health communities free of TB.
We are excited to continue to build on this partnership and work together to achieve TB elimination.
This webinar was recorded and can be accessed here.