Award

A native of Pennsylvania, Christopher N. H. Jenkins graduated from Stanford University in 1966. He spent 2 years in Vietnam with International Voluntary Services, doing community development work. He then pursued 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 UC Berkeley and received his Masters Degree in Public Health in 1984. 

From 1984-2001, Mr. Jenkins worked at UC San Francisco. In 1986, he and his colleague, Dr. Stephen 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, among others, the Project has developed and evaluated interventions to promote smoking cessation and prevention, proper nutrition, screening for breast, cervical, and colon cancer, and hepatitis B screening and immunizations among Vietnamese. 

In 1995, Mr. Jenkins conducted the first national smoking prevalence survey in Vietnam. In 1998, he returned to Vietnam to advise the Ministry of Health in developing a national tobacco control policy. He and the VCHPP staff have published their research findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association, American Journal of Public Health, Preventive Medicine, and American Journal of Preventive Medicine, among others. 

Prior to his untimely death in 2001, Mr. Jenkins served as an advisor to the Asian Pacific Partners for Empowerment and Leadership and the Intercultural Cancer Council, and on the Board of Directors of the Asian Pacific Islander American Health Forum.