As a Hmong medical interpreter for UC Davis Medical Center for the past 15 years, Norepaul Mouaryang, 47, has translated his share of bad news to his countrymen: “You have cancer.” “It is inoperable.” “It is terminal.”

“It is sad because many of these cancers could have been cured if they had been caught early enough,” Mouaryang says.

“Too many first-generation Hmong people are still afraid of doctors, afraid of surgery, ashamed of illness.”

Mouaryang hopes a new health education program, Cancer Awareness 101 for the Hmong, will help lessen the toll. The first Hmong cancer awareness course took place this month on the UC Davis Medical Center campus. Mouaryang was there as an interpreter, helping to translate cancer prevention and early detection messages into Hmong for elders and other leaders of the Sacramento area Hmong community.

The pilot course is a new program of the Asian American Network for Cancer Awareness, Research and Training, an $8 million, five-year project headquartered at UC Davis. The course is co-sponsored by the Hmong Women’s Heritage Association, a non-profit community service organization based in Sacramento.

“We are proud to be a co-sponsor of this course,” says Lou Moua, a medical interpreter at the Hmong Women’s Heritage Association. “There is very little information available in Hmong about cancer. This will give people in the Hmong community information they need to preserve their health.”

Thanks to decades of public health efforts, cancer early warning signs have become household wisdom throughout mainstream America, said Moon S. Chen Jr., associate director for cancer prevention and control at the UC Davis Cancer Center and principal investigator of AANCART nationally.

But these life-saving messages haven’t achieved the same penetration among immigrants from non English-speaking communities, said Chen, a professor of epidemiology and preventive medicine. The Hmong, whose language has no word for cancer, may be among the least informed.

Chen hopes to develop three levels of cancer awareness training tailored for the Hmong. The most basic level, offered March 1, was intended to provide the basic self-help information all adults should have about cancer prevention and early detection, from early cancer warning signs to lifestyle risk factors to cancer screening recommendations.

Some 35 Hmong elders and community members attended the pilot course, taught by Reginald Ho. Ho is a medical oncologist at the Straub Clinic and Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii, and clinical director and regional principal investigator for AANCART in Hawaii.

“Everyone was so happy to have this opportunity to learn more about this particular subject, and to think about ways they could then use the information to help other people within their community,” said Marilyn Mochel, nurse educator and program manager for Healthy House, a non-profit organization serving the Hmong in merced. Healthy House contracted with AANCART to survey attendees and evaluate their responses to the courses.

A more advanced course, still in development, will provide medical interpreters from throughout the region with the specialized vocabulary and knowledge they need to effectively translate discussions about cancer diagnosis and treatment in doctors’ offices and hospitals. The third course will train instructors who can teach the first two courses. Ultimately, Chen hopes to develop a standardized curriculum that can be offered in Hmong communities throughout the United States.

Funded by the National Cancer Institute, AANCART’s mission is to reduce cancer in Asian Americans, ethnic group by ethnic group. In Sacramento, one population of emphasis is the Hmong, a people from the mountains of Laos who fought with the United States during the Vietnam War. Thousands fled their homeland after the fall of Saigon in 1975, many settlingin California. Today California has the nation’s second-largest Hmong population, estimated at about 65,000. (Minnesota has the largest.) Sacramento is home to about 17,000 Hmong.

Claudia Morain is a UC Davis Health System public information representative who periodically contributes articles.