UC Davis undergraduates and medical students initiated the Vietnamese Cancer Awareness, Research and Education Society (VN CARES) in response to the National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) report that revealed Vietnamese American women had the highest incidence rate of cervical cancer – five times greater than Caucasian women.  To alleviate this alarming rate, VN CARES began working with the Vietnamese community of Sacramento in 2001 to implement three goals:

Payments for screenings and/or follow-up treatments are provided by the Cancer Detection Program (CDP), a program endorsed by the California Department of Health Services.  Women meeting the requirements of this program – low-income individuals of appropriate age with high co-pay, Medicaid/Medicare or no health insurance – are eligible to receive free screenings and follow-up treatments at various CDP-certified Sacramento clinics.  To seek out the target population, VN CARES has been holding monthly recruitments at local Vietnamese churches, temples, supermarkets, and hair salons in a grass-root effort to rapidly enroll these women for screening.

In a joint effort to increase the screening rate for Vietnamese women in the Sacramento area, VN CARES has been collaborating with Boat People S.O.S. (BPSOS), a non-profit community-based organization that serves immigrants and refugees.  BPSOS is currently in charge of scheduling appointments for the enrolled women while members of the VN CARES clinical team are responsible for attending the clinic with the women to offer translational services and emotional support.  Through these efforts, we have been successful in alleviating the social barriers that may have had prevented these individuals from receiving their regular screening: language deficiency, cultural estrangement, high screening cost, and low accessibility.