“I found all these Asians coming to see us for liver transplants who were dying from hepatitis B,” said Dr. Samuel So, in an interview with The New Yorker. This discovery, which he made at San Francisco’s California Pacific Medical Center, launched a decades-long mission to save lives.
Hepatitis B affects more than 250 million people globally, with two million chronic cases in the U.S., predominantly impacting Asian, Pacific Islander, and African communities. The virus often goes undetected until it’s too late for effective treatment.
Dr. So founded the Asian Liver Center at Stanford University in 1996, creating the first U.S. organization focused on addressing disproportionately high hepatitis B rates in Asian and Asian American communities. The center pioneered a comprehensive approach combining research, advocacy, and community outreach. Their work in Qinghai, China, has helped vaccinate over 500,000 children, while partnerships with the CDC and WHO target 41 countries representing 76% of global HBV cases.
Building on this foundation, San Francisco Hep B Free launched in 2007 through a partnership between So, the city’s Department of Public Health, and an Asian American newspaper publisher. The organization employed bold marketing strategies, including a provocative billboard campaign featuring Asian beauty queens asking “Which One Deserves to Die?” They’ve since screened 27,000 people through street fairs, churches, and community centers.
So’s advocacy led to California’s AB 789 in 2022, requiring primary care facilities to offer hepatitis B screening to all adults. The impact was immediate and significant: within a year at Stanford’s clinics, screening rates increased fivefold, and chronic hepatitis B diagnoses rose sixfold. These successes demonstrate how targeted advocacy and community engagement can transform public health outcomes, offering hope for millions affected by this preventable disease.
Read the full article from December 18, 2024 by Ingfei Chen for The New Yorker: A Cancer-Causing Virus Hiding in Millions of Americans
Read this article from 2008 on Angels in Medicine about Dr. So:
Watch this interview with Dr. So:
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