This year marks the 12th anniversary of May Hepatitis Awareness Month, which is something the Hepatitis B Foundation is happy to celebrate. It is a good time to reflect on how far we’ve come these past 12 years, both from an organizational and disease awareness perspective.

In 1995, the Hepatitis B Foundation moved from the co-founders’ kitchen offices to a “real” office with one full-time staff person.We launched our website www.hepb.org that literally opened the world’s doors to us! We also hosted the first Princeton Workshop, an unprecedented gathering of the nation’s thought leaders from academe, industry and government to focus exclusively on hepatitis B therapeutics.

At the same time, the CDC recommendation for universal infant HBV vaccination was being implemented across the country. And lamivudine – the first oral drug for HBV – was causing a wave of anticipation as it entered the final stages of testing before being approved by the FDA three years later.

Call it coincidence or synergy, but as the Hepatitis B Foundation was beginning to make an impact at the national and international level, there were also substantial advances being made in the prevention and treatment of hepatitis B.

Needless to say, all of this activity in 1995 was incredibly exciting for those of us who had started out in the “dark days” of hepatitis B – before awareness, before universal vaccination, and before treatment was even a possibility.

As we celebrate the 12th anniversary of May Hepatitis Awareness Month, it’s satisfying to see the progress that has been made in just over a decade as reflected by the activities that are reported in this issue of B Informed.We’re not done yet, however we’ve made it this far, so I’m confident we will be able to go the distance.