A larger than life bee was recently sighted sitting lethargically on the lawn of a local strip mall. Reports of the giant black-and-yellow-striped fuzzy have occurred throughout central San Diego and the buzz is that it’s exhibiting signs of jaundice and fatigue –symptoms of hepatitis B.

The Hepatitis Bee is a campaign mascot for a Family Health Centers of San Diego (FHCSD) Viral Hepatitis Prevention Program, an annual hepatitis B vaccination campaign targeting gay men in central San Diego.

National Hepatitis B Awareness Week runs May 9-16. By Monday, May 14, FHCSD will have fully launched its local campaign.

“Hepatitis B is an issue that gay men just don’t seem to be concerned with. In some cases, it’s not even on their radar as a health issue,” said Teresa Carrillo, coordinator of FHCSD’s program.

“The first step of this campaign is just getting people thinking about hepatitis. Let them know that it’s around and that men who have sex with men (MSM) are at high risk for it,” said Robert Lewis, FHCSD’s director of HIV Services.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that hepatitis B is a vaccine-preventable sexually transmitted disease that attacks the liver and can cause lifelong infection, cirrhosis of the liver, liver cancer, liver failure and even death.

According to health officials, the MSM population and also people who have multiple sex partners are at high risk for contracting the virus.

“You may feel tired, sick to your stomach, have a fever, not want to eat or have diarrhea. Some people have dark urine and light-colored stools. Some people don’t have any symptoms,” Carrillo said, noting that although the vaccine is a three-shot series, getting the hepatitis B vaccine is definitely better than getting hepatitis B disease.

The hepatitis B vaccine prevents hepatitis B disease and its serious consequences, such as liver cancer. Therefore, this is the first anti-cancer vaccine, and data shows that it is a very safe vaccine, Carrillo said.

“The CDC estimates that one out of 20 people in San Diego County will at one point in their lives be infected by hepatitis B, and has identified MSM and injection-drug users as high-risk groups,” Lewis said.

The latest statistics available for San Diego from the San Diego County Health Department are from 2004. They show a total of 1,006 diagnosed cases of chronic hepatitis B, with the highest concentration in the central region of San Diego. While the county doesn’t correlate cases with risk behaviors, statistics do reflect that males contract approximately 60 percent of infections.

A campaign planning team made up of service providers that serve the MSM population, as well as members of San Diego’s gay community, has worked since October 2006 to help guide the FHCSD campaign’s development.

“Through meetings and surveys done with members of the MSM population, it was clear that this year’s campaign needed to be simple, as well as eye-catching and straightforward,” Lewis said, explaining why FHCSD chose to use the Hepatitis Bee in its campaign.

This year marks the fourth of the five-year FHCSD program to raise hepatitis B and C awareness. “Our efforts regarding hepatitis C generally target injection-drug users in San Diego. Our goal is always to launch in May as part of National Hepatitis Awareness Month,” Lewis said.

“Although Pride season and summer, in general, offer greater access to the community, seeing that we use quite a bit of outdoor advertising, such as bus shelters throughout Hillcrest and North Park, we do work to strategically stagger our campaigns throughout the year to avoid over saturation of health messages,” Lewis said. However, he said that visits to FHCSD’s Tuesday Night Clinic and cases of diagnosed STDs are fairly consistent throughout the year.

Launching the campaign during warmer weather is also beneficial because many people travel internationally. They will especially benefit from an accelerated dosing schedule for GlaxoSmithKline’s Twinrix, announced by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last month. “Many regions throughout the world are endemic for hepatitis A and hepatitis B, and an overwhelming majority of these international travelers are not vaccinated before the trip. Therefore, international travelers may be at risk for contracting the disease and they should consult their health care provider prior to traveling abroad,” an FDA release reports.

Twinrix is the only hepatitis A and hepatitis B combination vaccine available in the United States. Besides travelers, it “may also benefit emergency first care responders, especially those deployed to disaster areas overseas, as well as others at risk for hepatitis, such as people with sexually transmitted diseases and those who are HIV positive,” said Bradley A. Connor, GlaxoSmithKline’s principal study investigator and travel medicine specialist.

Obtaining funding for public education campaigns, such as the FHCSD’s, can be challenging. “It is more expensive to launch a campaign than it is to fund a staff person to do community-based outreach and education. However, the return on investment, in terms of shifting social norms within a community toward healthier behaviors, can be much greater,” Lewis said.

Each campaign involves a significant amount of work before and after the launch. FHCSD conducts needs assessments and other formative work to specifically identify the issues to be addressed. It also does design work and pilot testing before launching the campaign. Finally, organizers conduct an evaluation phase to gauge effectiveness, and they start work on the next year’s campaign. “With multi-year campaigns, our goal is to continually build upon and reinforce the messages from previous years,” Lewis said.

The campaign, which is funded with $133,000 per year through the Viral Hepatitis Branch of the CDC, also allows for training of other health and social service providers to assist them in incorporating viral hepatitis information into their services.

The 2007 campaign materials will appear on bus shelters, displays in establishments, ads in local GLBT publications and banner ads on Gay.com. FHCSD also displays information on its Web site at www.fhcsd.org.

Throughout the campaign, Hepatitis Bee will be distributing information cards at bars and other venues, as well as by request, to remind community members to get vaccinated – and avoid being stung by the hepatitis virus.

When the campaign fully launches next week, local vaccination sites and more information on viral hepatitis A, B, and C will be available online at www.hepbee.com and by phone at 619-515-2506.