Chistopher N.H. Jenkins Autobiography

Autobiography of Christopher N.H. Jenkins, M.A., M.P.H.

Chris Jenkins, a native of Pennsylvania, attended Stanford University where he graduated in 1966. He spent two years in Vietnam with International Voluntary Services, doing community development work. After returning from Vietnam, Mr. Jenkins received a Masters Degree in Asian Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1971, he married his wife, Tran Khanh Tuyet, whom he had met in Vietnam. In 1982, he returned to the University of California, Berkeley and received his Masters Degree in Public Health two years later.

Mr. Jenkins worked at the University of California, San Francisco from 1984-2001. In 1986, he and his colleague, Dr. Steve McPhee, started the Vietnamese Community Health Promotion Project (VCHPP). With funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Cancer Institute, and the State of California, over the past 20 years the Project has developed and evaluated interventions to promote smoking cessation and prevention, proper nutrition, breast and cervical cancer screening and hepatitis B immunizations among Vietnamese. In 1989, as part of a Vietnamese-language anti-tobacco media campaign in the San Francisco area, the project erected the first Vietnamese-language billboard in the US, warning of the hazards of cigarette smoking.

In 1995, Mr. Jenkins conducted the first national smoking prevalence survey in Vietnam. In 1998, he returned to Vietnam as an adviser to the Ministry of Health in the development of a national tobacco control policy. He and the staff of the VCHPP have published research findings in a number of journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association , the American Journal of Public Health , Preventive Medicine , and the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. .

Mr. Jenkins was a member of the Advisory Committee of Asian Pacific Partners for Empowerment and Leadership, served as an Adviser and Collaborator with the Intercultural Cancer Council, and was a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the Asian Pacific Islander American Health Forum for 10 years.