DBS Testing Walk-In Service at Hepatitis NSW

On 17th February, Hepatitis NSW launched its new HepLink DBS (Dried Blood Spot) clinic at the ACON NSP in Surry Hills.

HepLink DBS is a peer-led model where trained peers—people with lived experience of hep C—do DBS tests on community members. DBS is an innovative and effective testing method requiring only a few drops of blood from a finger prick, eliminating the need for venous blood draws or clinical staff.

DBS testing is user-friendly, effective, mobile and convenient, so it is particularly beneficial for reaching priority populations who may have faced discrimination and may be wary of health professionals. Our peers foster trust and engagement amongst vulnerable people, with the aim of increasing community uptake of testing and treatment. We are also looking to conduct outreach events at community support locations that are not commonly accessed by health services.

HepLink DBS also includes a care pathway element—with the consent of the participants tested—where we maintain contact with them throughout their treatment journey, providing support and promoting ongoing engagement. This initiative marks a significant step forward in making hep C testing more accessible and less intimidating for those who need it most.

HepLink DBS is funded by a grant from the Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care through Hepatitis Australia.

The HepLink DBS 414 Pop-Up Clinic is open on Mondays from 10am to 1pm at the ACON NSP at 414 Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills. We have already tested eight people since opening and look forward to seeing more over the coming weeks and months. Anyone accessing the ACON NSP is eligible for testing.

For more information on the 414 Pop-Up Clinic, or on hosting HepLink DBS at your service, please contact:
Gracey Woods, HepLink DBS Project Officer
[email protected]

Peer Partnership Program: our ongoing success story

The Hepatitis NSW Peer Partnership Program, led by our team members Liam and JD, continues to go from strength to strength with our successful community engagement activities.

Throughout 2024, our peers carried out work across the majority of NSW’s Local Health Districts (LHDs) with the help of our amazing partner organisations, and through a variety of inreach and outreach events.

Our recent half-yearly Healthcare Partner survey reported:

• 100% approval rate for the professionalism and confidence in engaging community
• 100% scorecard on partner satisfaction with performance of peers and the program overall.

One partner perfectly summed up the value in having Hepatitis NSW lived-experience peer workers attending testing events: “The success of a particular community session hinges greatly on our ability to team up with a peer worker. I have found that clients are much more likely to immediately engage with a peer worker as opposed to a clinician. As a clinician I find it takes longer to gain the trust of the client during the initial conversation.”

With our peer workers out and about from early 2025, the Peer Partnership Team have also been on the road to engage community and partners across the state. Key to this is the important work done by JD, our Peer Support Project Officer, as part of the Justice Health NSW high intensity testing campaign team that attends various correctional centres to test for hep C. In February, JD attended Lithgow, and next week she, along with Aboriginal Community Engagement Officer Maia, will join the team at Bathurst for a huge testing event aimed at identifying and treating hep C within this priority setting.

The Peer Partnership Program has also been recruiting new lived-experience peer workers over the past six weeks. There has been plenty of interest and we look forward to welcoming some new team members once they have been trained up.

On 4th March 2025, we held another of our PeerHub event series—Hepatitis NSW’s regular online meeting for hep C lived-experience staff—which was attended by twenty of our amazing peer workforce. This session of PeerHub included content introduced by peer workers and featured conversations on a variety of topics that relate to peer work and community engagement. This meeting also focused on hep B, featuring online hep B training, and a large discussion session. The next PeerHub will be held in early August after Hepatitis NSW’s annual HEP CURED campaign.

After an exciting start to 2025, the Peer Partnership Program will have much to report over the coming months.

Launch of LiverCare

Hepatitis NSW is delighted to finally launch the LiverCare project in NSW, in collaboration with the Kirby Institute at UNSW, where we are leading the charge in taking hepatitis B and hepatitis C point-of-care testing and FibroScan services to affected communities.

After twelve months of hard work preparing our team, our first event was a roaring success, with twenty-three members of the Filipino community coming out to Rooty Hill to get tested and check their liver health. Once again, we partnered with our amazing Cheryl Burman Award winning colleagues from the Liver Outreach Team, Storr Liver Centre, Westmead Hospital, to deliver this event.

This launch is a culmination of many years of dedication towards delivering better hepatitis B healthcare to multicultural communities that are most affected by this virus. We have many more events planned with Chinese, Korean, Pasifika, and Vietnamese communities across Sydney.

Community Health Outreach at Yabun Festival

Once again, Hepatitis NSW was a proud participant of the Yabun Festival earlier this year, which was held at Victoria Park, Sydney, on Gadigal Land of the Eora Nation.

Held annually on 26th January, the Yabun Festival is the largest community-led one-day festival of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. The event was bustling with market stalls, panel discussions, live music, and traditional cultural performances by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

Our team had a great time yarning with Mob at our stall, which we shared with our Closing the Gap 414 partners SWOP, Positive Life NSW, and ACON. Yabun gave us a chance to meet, talk, and share information about hepatitis B and hepatitis C with both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people, as well as helping us to promote our Hepatitis NSW resources and health promotion services. We look forward to attending again next year!

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