Enhancing awareness and facilitating vaccination among populations at risk for HAV infection are urgently needed. About a third of this sample was vaccinated, and another third reported knowing nothing about hepatitis. Furthermore, many participants reported engaging in behaviors that put them and their sexual partners at risk for hepatitis A infection. The low level of [...]

Sample Demographics Of the 120 MSM participants who completed the survey, 107 self-identified as African American or black; 5 self-identified as Hispanic or Latino; 4, as Native American; 4, as white. Of the 107 African American participants, the mean (± SD) age was 24.8 ± 5.93 years, with a range of 18 to 50 years. [...]

Data Collection Procedures During November 2001, data were collected anonymously in a predominantly African American, “gay” male bar in Birmingham, Alabama, USA. All bar patrons were asked to participate, regardless of gender, by a trained recruiter. In order to ensure informed consent, the recruiter assessed sobriety of potential participants using established criteria. Questionnaires were self-administered [...]

While the prevalence of hepatitis A virus (HAV) infection is relatively low in the general population within developed nations such as the United States (US), numerous reports have documented outbreaks of HAV among men who have sex with men (MSM). With an effective two-dose vaccine available, HAV remains an important vaccine-preventable disease in the United [...]

Previous studies on dyspepsia did not report their results by race/ethnicity. Therefore, investigating dyspepsia in African-American and Hispanic populations is a distinctive characteristic of our study. We focused on the etiology of dyspepsia in relation to age and alarm features among African-American and Hispanic patients. Our study indicated that the presence of alarm features in [...]

The study included 357 African-American patients (178 males, 179 females) and 321 Hispanic patients (154 males, 167 females) (Table 1). The most frequent alarm features among the study population was age (>50 years) followed by anemia, weight loss, and gastrointestinal bleeding. About three-quarters of the patients (72%) were over 50 years of age. The prevalence [...]

Study Population and Study Site The King-Drew Medical Center is an inner-city community teaching hospital serving a predominantly African-American and Hispanic population. Medical records of 764 patients 22-98 years of age with investigated dyspepsia were identified for a retrospective review. Demographic information, presence or absence of alarm features, and the results of the endoscopic and/or [...]