Our Advisors

Director of Public Health Research Hepatitis B Foundation Dr. Chari Cohen is the Director of Public Health Research for the Hepatitis B Foundation (HBF), in Doylestown, PA. For over 10 years, she has worked with the HBF public health team to plan, implement and evaluate community programs and research projects focusing on hepatitis B and liver cancer. Currently, her research focuses on reducing HBV and liver cancer health disparities, and developing models for improved health care access and management for chronic HBV infection, including the early detection and prevention of liver cancer. Dr. Cohen directs Hep B United Philadelphia, a campaign to increase testing and vaccination to fight hepatitis B and liver cancer. Dr. Cohen received her PhD in 2015 from Drexel University School of Public Health; and MPH in Community Health Education from Temple University in 2001.

Director Clinical Hepatology Professor of Clinical Medicine Medical Director UCSD Medical Center Robert G. Gish, MD, is a world-renowned hepatologist, an advisor of the National Task Force, Consultant Professor at Stanford University Hospitals, Medical Director of Hepatitis B Foundation, and Steering Committee member of the National Viral Hepatitis Routable. Gish has published more than 500 original articles, reviews, abstracts, and book chapters with great focus on hepatitis B. He has been at the forefront of hepatitis B advocacy/policy effort and clinical trials. He frequently attends monthly call and provides insightful and useful comments. Dr. Gish received his medical degree from the University of Kansas in Kansas City. After graduation, he went on to complete his internship and residency in internal medicine at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine and a fellowship in Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is board certified in Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology and has the advance Certificate of Added Qualification (CAQ) in Liver Transplantation and is a UNOS certified Liver Transplant Physician. He is a member of the American Association for the Study of the Liver, the American Gastroenterological Association, the American Society of Transplant Physicians, and the International Liver Transplant Society, among others. He is fluent in Spanish and Vietnamese.

Director of Immigrant Health at North East Medical Services Amy Shen Tang, MD is a primary care internist and Director of Immigrant Health at North East Medical Services where she oversees hepatitis B and tuberculosis clinical programs. She served as the Co-Chair for the National Taskforce on Hepatitis B from 2017 to 2019 and currently leads a workgroup of hepatitis B experts from the American Association of Study of Liver Diseases, the Center for Disease Control, Project ECHO, and the University of Washington in developing a web-based hepatitis B guidance for primary care providers managing chronic hepatitis B. Dr. Tang previously served as the Hepatitis B Program Director at Charles B. Wang Community Health Center in New York City where she oversaw hepatitis B clinical care, research, community outreach and education. She has also served as a hepatitis B clinical advisor for the National Association of Community Health Centers, New York City Department of Health, and Perinatal HBV Project ECHO. She received her medical degree from the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine and completed her primary care internal medicine residency at NYU School of Medicine and Bellevue Hospital.

Professor and Associate Director of Population Research and Cancer Disparities UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Moon S. Chen, PhD, MPH is a co-founder of the National Task Force with Dr. Gary Euler of CDC and a nationally renowned expert in cancer health disparities, particularly as they affect Asian-American populations. When Dr. Chen was professionally challenged with the task to “eliminate health disparities”, he could think of only one example where health disparities have ever been eliminated…and that was the historical example of smallpox eradication. Today because of smallpox eradication, there are no disparities between any people groups as smallpox has been eliminated from the face of the globe. At the 2008 NIH Conference on the Science of Health Disparities, he proposed that hepatitis B viral infections offers the world’s next best candidate for elimination…and that HBV could be eliminated through the same approach as smallpox. This would be through “case finding”, i.e., screening to identify any “positives” and referring them to appropriate treatment and for those who lack natural immunity, to vaccination. Concurrently, completing the birth-dose of HBV and the continuation of HBV vaccinations for youth could spare future generations from HBV. This vision drives his passion for the Task Force’s work and the potential for seeing a world free of HBV-linked infections. He directed the NIH-funded “Liver Cancer Control Interventions for Asian Americans” and continues to be engaged in community and clinically-based HBV control. Currently he is UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Associate Director for Cancer Control and Professor in the Division of Hematology and Oncology at UC Davis, continuing to be engaged in HBV control and also leads a portfolio of research that addresses determinants of cancer risk and their mitigation in human populations.

Karen Jiobu has a broad background in clinical laboratory medicine and community service projects spanning over 30 years. She has been spending the last 10 years working to eliminate hepatitis B by working with Asian American Community Services, Asian Services in Action, Asian Festival Health and Wellness Pavilion, and the Ohio Asian American Health Coalition. She has collaborated on various research projects, including the data collection for Hep B Free database, New York University Center for the Study of Asian American Health for Ohio, as well as the Health through Action program funded by the Asian and Pacific Islander Health Forum and the Kellogg Foundation (2008-2012), which resulted in a Poster presentation at the American Public Health Association National Convention in October 2011 and a published article in the Journal of Investigative Medicine in 2013. She wrote the first draft of FOA for the CDC grant “Early identification and linkage to care among foreign-born persons with hepatitis B” for the Ohio Asian American Coalition, which was successfully funded. Mrs. Jiobu has previously served on the National Task Force on Hepatitis B’s Executive Board as well as a Regional Director. She is also a member of the Hep B United coalition and the National Viral Hepatitis Roundtable.

Dr. Richard Andrews, MD, MPH, is the Viral Hepatitis Program Director at HOPE Clinic in Houston, TX. He served as the South Midwest Regional Director for the Task Force in 2016 before serving as the Co-Chair later that year. Dr. Andrews sees uncomplicated hepatitis B and C patients at Hope Clinic in southwest Houston, Texas. Hope Clinic is the clinical arm of Houston’s Asian American Health Coalition, whose founding purpose was to ensure culturally and linguistically competent care to Asian patients. While at Hope Clinic he has overseen the development of an active hepatitis B/C screening, prevention and treatment program. Over 400 chronic hepatitis B patients have been seen at the clinic, with over 150 under active antiviral treatment presently. Roughly half of the clinic’s current population is Asian, with the affected hepatitis B population being primarily Vietnamese, Chinese, Burmese and others. Before moving to Texas Dr. Andrews worked in migrant farmworker and community health centers on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. He grew up bilingual in southern Spain, which sensitized him to cultural and linguistic differences. He speaks moderately mangled morsels of Mandarin, Vietnamese, Cantonese and Burmese – just enough to make the patients laugh. He received his MD at University of Connecticut Medical School, Family Medicine residency at Georgetown University. He did his MPH degree and Preventive Medicine residency at Johns Hopkins University. He is board certified in family medicine. Dr Andrews is a past board member of the Texas Association of Community Health Centers (TACHC) and of the Migrant Clinician’s Network (MCN). He has been participating in AAPCHO/CERC activities since 2014.

Dr. Lu-yu Hwang, MD, is a Professor at the Department of Epidemiology, Human Genetics and Environment Science Center for Infectious Diseases under the School of Public Health, University of Texas HSC at Houston, TX.  She is also the Director, Laboratory of Virology and STD Research, Center for Infectious Diseases at the University of Texas, School of Public Health at Houston.