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City of Cupertino, CA / TEDxYouth@TorreAve / 18 Jul 2019
City of Cupertino, CA / TEDxYouth@TorreAve / 18 Jul 2019
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From YouTube: TEDxYouth@TorreAve: Stuti Upadhyay (2019)

Description

Stuti Upadhyay is a junior at Monta Vista High School. In her free time, she enjoys playing soccer, hanging out with friends and family, listening to music, and doing anything outdoors. She also loves watching TV shows with her family, especially Modern Family, Blackish, White Collar, Pysch, and more. Her talk is about the prevalence of Hepatitis B in Asian communities, and the need for Cupertino to be more aware about the disease and the stigma surrounding it. Through her talk, she hopes to generate awareness about the disease and encourage students to become ambassadors and advocates of the subjects they are most passionate about

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By the time this forty second hourglass runs out of sand, one person will have died from hepatitis B. Hepatitis B is a disease that can lead to liver damage, liver cancer and liver failure. It claims over 600 thousand lives each year and leads to over 70% of all liver cancer related deaths.

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What's especially staggering about these statistics is that scientists were able to create a vaccine for hepatitis B in 1965 nearly 55 years ago. This vaccine was so effective. It was dubbed the world's first anti-cancer vaccine by the World Health Organization, despite the commercialization of this extremely effective vaccine. Over half a century ago, 240 million people worldwide are affected by hepatitis B, and this is a problem. My talk today is centered around this disease and is organized into three different sections: first, general information and background about the disease.

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Second, my personal experiences and motivation for delivering this talk and, finally, how we as a community, can innovate an environment in which we are all more aware about hepatitis B and know how to react to and deal with this disease.

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Let's start off by talking about heavy as a disease, as I mentioned earlier, heavy affects the liver and claims over 600,000 lives each year. What I didn't mention is that Hep B is a silent killer, which means it often does not show any symptoms until it is far too late to treat. For example, even if you are affected with the disease, when you're 25, you may not show any symptoms until you're 55, at which point the liver damage is too severe.

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There are no cures for hepatitis B, although there are effective treatments, if you diagnose the disease early enough, because of this, it is essential that everyone gets tested and screened early in life. Another key characteristic about this disease is that it is especially prevalent in Asian communities compared to the one in.

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Small red bar one in twelve Asians are living with hepatitis. B. Take a second to compare these two diagrams one in.

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1908 Americans consist of less than 6% of the American population they make up over 50% of the population living with hepatitis B in Cupertino, where there is such a large Asian population. It is essential that we are all understand our increased risk for this disease in this room today, I'm sure there are several people who know about hepatitis B and it's increased prevalence in Asian communities.

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However, I can also guarantee you that there are several people who have never heard about hepatitis B and how prevalent is in Asian communities, and this is a problem until every single person in this room is aware, and every single person in our community is aware about hepatitis B. Our job is not done.

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One reason for the general lack of awareness surrounding hepatitis B is that, because in Asian countries and in Asian populations, the disease as a whole is heavily stigmatized. Hepatitis B is passed and transmitted similarly to HIV, so through blood, birth and sexual intercourse. The disease cannot be transmitted casually. It can't be passed by sharing food or drinks, coughing, sneezing or holding hands.

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Unfortunately, many people are unaware that Hep B is not transmitted casually and because of this hepatitis, B carriers face serious discrimination. In fact, in China, workplace discrimination was so severe that in 2010 the Chinese government had to pass laws banning involuntary hepatitis B testing prior to offering someone a job or accepting someone into school. Oftentimes at big carrier's face much worse than just workplace discrimination. They can be shunned by friends, isolated by family and feel alone and at fault for a disease.

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They often have no control over and given the general stigma and taboo surrounding the disease. Many people refuse to get tested or vaccinated. To give you some background on the vaccine, it consists of three shots. Those two should be separated from those by a minimum of one month and those three should be separated from those two by a minimum of five months. The whole course takes as little as six months and is completely safe.

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Still many people refuse to get tested and they refuse to get vaccinated to them, not knowing whether they have the disease and possibly losing their life to it is a better alternative than getting tested, getting unfavorable results and then living a life of shame.

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Unfortunately, this mindset and this attitude does nothing but reinforce a vicious cycle in which stigma and taboos surrounding hepatitis B prevent any sort of meaningful conversation that could help save lives because of this two key takeaways. That I would like to imprint on. All of you today is that hepatitis B is a extremely prevalent in Asian communities and be largely stigmatized, based on misconceptions.

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Now that I've talked about hepatitis B as a disease, I want to segue to my own personal experiences. I was first introduced to the disease in a week-long summer program hosted by the Asian liver Center at Stanford University at first hepatitis, B seemed like any other disease. Sad, but not extraordinary. I didn't become seriously passionate about awareness until I realized that people who are dying despite a well-established vaccine lives were being lost.

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For no reason to me, if something as simple as starting conversations and clearing up misconceptions could mean less people were losing their friends and losing their family, then it was my obligation to do whatever I could to support the cause.

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Because of this I joined to outreach committees or Oasys for the newsletter Oh see, I wrote, biweekly articles on hepatitis, B and events. The ALC was trying to host for the international awareness OC, which is more significant to my talk today, I traveled to China for a week visiting various middle schools and high schools and working on outreach. Through this experience, I was able to firsthand witness the stigmatization of the disease when people saw our blue shirts and understood what we were talking about, many of them turned away or just avoided us altogether.

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Still I was able to talk to people who faced this termination everyday because they were carriers. I was able to clear up misconceptions. Firsthand and I was able to hear the stories of people affected by hepatitis B. This was an eye eye opening experience for me. What stuck with me the most, however, we're not the stories from people I heard in China, but the stories from students who had traveled with me from back home in Cupertino I've changed the names to respect their privacy.

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But one of my friends William, who goes to Limburg high school, told me that both of his parents had hepatitis B and they didn't tell him until he was 16, because they were that embarrassed. One of my other friends Sarah, who goes to Castle AO High School in Palo Alto, told me that Sarah's mom met hepatitis B and when Sarah's mom told her parents or Sarah's grandparents, Sarah's grandparents shunned Sarah's mom and they hadn't spoken to Sarah's mom in 20 years hearing these stories made hepatitis B and it's negative impact come alive.

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In my eyes, I had always considered the disease more of a problem for countries like China or Africa or India, but I now realize that hepatitis B affects every single one of us in this community, whether it be directly or indirectly. I also realized that all it was great to travel to China and work on outreach there. There was still a lot of work to be done at home because of this I started. Taking steps to combat hepatitis B in Cupertino, my friend, Jamie Chan and I have started our own nonprofit organization.

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Currently, we are working with the Public Safety Commission to maximize our reach and get involved with larger events. We frequently set up booths at the DeAnza flea market and in front of the library to try and reach out to the most amount of people we partner with local businesses like Hong in art, and we volunteer at events like fairs festivals and runs, so we can have more of our community be aware about hepatitis B.

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Our nonprofits goal is that a hundred percent of the residents in Cupertino are either vaccinated or getting tested if they are already living with the disease and getting the treatments they need. This is not to say that our nonprofit organization has created radical change and has been incredibly effective, but we are doing whatever we can to help fight and to help advance the fight against hepatitis B.

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This brings me to my final point today.

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Why should we care so much, and why should we put so much effort into fighting hepatitis B? The most obvious answer is that outreach and awareness can save lives, especially when the outreach is happening in a community so heavily populated with Asians.

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Even though all students attending a public school in California are required to have the Hep B vaccine, there's a large amount of people who immigrate to Cupertino from countries like China at an older age, which leaves much of the population at risk, and even if we ourselves are vaccinated and can't be living with the disease, we should still learn about and understand something that could affect so many of her friends and families.

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And once we have this knowledge, we should try to spread it, whether it be getting involved in an organization or just talking to our friends and family. Nothing I mentioned today fits the traditional image of innovation. No new apps are being created, no new technologies are being made, but, as the speakers before me have mentioned, innovation comes in many different forms. In this case, we must innovate, a community in which we are all more aware about hepatitis, B and its effects.

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We must innovate a community in which we can discuss this disease free of stigmas and taboos, and we must innovate a community in which we do not judge or shame hepatitis B carriers, but rather accept and help them, and this innovation should not just stop at hepatitis B, but should carry forward to any and every single other disease.

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Lastly, I would like to conclude my talk today by encouraging every single one of you to innovate like Jamie and I have with our nonprofit organization. Perhaps after listening to this talk today, hepatitis B does not sound interesting at all. That's fine! We all have certain subjects or certain topics that we're passionate about. For me, it was a B for you. It could be anything find what you're interested in find a way to get involved and find a way to innovate. The change you want to see, no matter what that change may be.

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Thank you so much for listening to my talk today. If you have any questions about the information I've covered or if you would like to get involved in our a nonprofit organization, please feel free to contact me at the information above. Thank you.