The primary mission of O.A.S.I.S. is to provide low-cost, subsidized medical care, clinical research studies, and to develop and provide educational materials for medically marginalized former or current drug and alcohol users. We serve a multi-ethnic community, approximately 1/3 of whom are medically uninsured or underinsured and over 50% of whom have substance abuse histories — including alcohol abuse — of greater than 20 years duration. Our hepatitis C treatment services are available to all persons, regardless of how they contracted hepatitis C.

The current study entitled above is a well designed-brief education intervention for drug users to durably improve their knowledge of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, attitudes, and motivations toward healthy behaviors, and might also improve hepatitis C testing and hepatitis A and hepatitis B vaccination rates.

There are two test populations with a two video curricula:

• Out of treatment drug users at syringe exchange (100 people) who are shown a brief, 7 minute peer-based prevention education video and;
• In-treatment drug users enrolled in methadone maintenance (450 people).

The project is still on-going, but current evaluation suggests that the video curriculum can lead to improvements in knowledge, attitudes, and motivations in both in- and out-of-treatment users. Further analyses, such as the impact of the intervention on HCV testing rates and hepatitis A and hepatitis B vaccination rates are pending.

The videos are now available for viewing at the: HCV University website: www.hcvu.org/et_patient.php