Studies have shown that many primary care providers cannot differentiate between adult populations that should be screened for chronic hepatitis B because of their high prevalence of chronic infection (for example, people born in geographic regions with high HBV endemicity; see Box 3-1) and populations that should be vaccinated against HBV because of their high risk of becoming newly infected (for example, health-care workers, men who have sex with men, prison inmates, and household and sexual contacts of chronically infected individuals) (Euler et al., 2003b; Ferrante et al., 2008; Lai et al., 2007).

In a survey of primary care providers in San Francisco, all 91 respondents correctly answered that Chinese immigrants have a higher prevalence of chronic hepatitis B than non-Hispanic white or US-born Chinese people. However, a portion of the same group incorrectly identified HIV-infected