The Health Equity Program: Hepatitis Outreach for Migrant Populations

ongoing

Migrants and refugees living in Europe often face barriers to access and understand viral hepatitis prevention, screening, and care services. These barriers, coupled with the silent nature of viral hepatitis infections, can lead to late presentation to care, contributing to higher liver disease burden and poorer health outcomes. The Health Equity Program: Hepatitis Outreach for Migrant Populations (HEP-HOP) project aims to overcome these barriers by improving, scaling-up, and evaluating community-based viral hepatitis screening, HBV vaccination services, and linkage to care. Crucial to combatting viral hepatitis is vaccination and as part HEP-HOP, we will work to understand and address vaccine mis/disinformation and hesitancy among at-risk migrant and refugee populations to support HBV vaccination efforts in Belgium, Latvia, and Spain. HEP-HOP will explore personal and structural barriers to viral hepatitis services in all three settings, including participatory research methods to incorporate migrants and refugees’ insights and preferences. HEP-HOP will also develop an extensive context-specific needs assessment in Latvia to establish the groundwork for the future implementation of outreach programmes for viral hepatitis drawing, additionally, on cross-border lessons learned from Belgium and Spain. As part of this innovative strategy, HEP-HOP will train community health workers and teachers to deliver culturally and linguistically adapted outreach programmes. These will provide decentralized viral hepatitis screening and vaccination opportunities, supported by expedited referral pathways to ensure linkage to care and long-term retainment in the health system. Importantly, the impact of these programmes on vaccination uptake and the prevention of viral hepatitis-related liver cancer will be assessed. Findings will be disseminated widely for broad knowledge transfer across Europe and to inform policies to reach the WHO viral hepatitis elimination targets.