Received: 15 January 2021 | Accepted: 24 January 2021
DOI: 10.1002/jgf2.424
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Virtual Community Outreach Program during the pandemic of
COVID-­19
To the Editor:
Many Japanese people in the United States struggle with seeking
medical care because of language barriers and unfamiliarity with the
healthcare system. For the past 10 years, we have held a Japanese
Community Outreach (JCO) Program for Japanese people in
Pittsburgh to augment health literacy and to minimize health knowl-
edge gaps along with encouraging networking among Japanese
immigrants. We have held a weekend meeting each month at our
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Shadyside Family
Health Center, providing childcare services and light refreshments,
with support from UPMC Shadyside Hospital Foundation. When
COVID-­19 started to hit neighboring states in March 2020, we de-
cided to halt our monthly on-­site activities in order to minimize the
risk of exposure to COVID-­19. At the same time, our clinic tried to
minimize in-­person office visits along with maximizing virtual office
visits. However, virtual office visits are supposed to be made through
HIPPA compliant patient portal account, which requires patient
social security numbers (SSN) and driver's license numbers in the
United States. Unfortunately, these changes limited access to health
care for some of our Japanese patients who do not have either SSN
or the driver's license numbers. Additionally, most Japanese patients
could not reach out to health professionals over the phone because
of lack of English language skills. Also, because of the pandemic, they
could not visit the clinic to schedule an appointment or communicate
with our staff members as the alternative methods.
To address obstacles, we implemented three strategies. The first
strategy was to switch the monthly meeting to a virtual meeting in
April 2020. We emailed a Zoom meeting link to our list of members,
and we also arranged telephone connections for elderly community.
We covered virtual doctor's appointment, COVID-­19, obstetric care,
self-­care with over-­the-­counter drugs, sleep, health insurance, and
influenza. In addition to general information about COVID-­19, we
discussed tips to cope with stressful situations during the pandemic,
resources available in Japanese regarding domestic violence, and
emergency contraception. More than 100 participants attended the
meetings for the past 9 months. The second strategy was to provide
an email address to enable Japanese patients to schedule appoint-
ments via email in Japanese. The third strategy was to share, via the
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited.
© 2021 The Authors. Journal of General and Family Medicine published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Japan Primary Care Association.
J Gen Fam Med. 2021;00:1. 
JCO website, other useful and reliable Japanese website links to help
patients access the latest information about COVID-­19 in the fluid set-
ting.1 These strategies demonstrate the importance of acting quickly
to maintain commutation with the Japanese community and address
potential barriers to ongoing health care. We were able to use tech-
nology to compensate for limited ability to meet in person. These are
great examples of transformation related to the COVID-­19 pandemic,
providing helpful information to a disadvantaged minority in Japan.
AC K N OW L E D G E M E N T S
I would like to thank Teiichi Takedai for assistance with the manu-
script and Cynthia Salter for reviewing the manuscript.
F U N D I N G I N F O R M AT I O N
Our Japanese Community Outreach Program is supported by the
Shadyside Hospital Foundation.
C O N FL I C T O F I N T E R E S T
The author declares no conflict of interests for this article.
Kento Sonoda MD, AAHIVS
Department of Family Medicine, University of Pittsburgh
Medical Center Shadyside, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Correspondence
Kento Sonoda, Department of Family Medicine, University of
Pittsburgh Medical Center Shadyside, 5230 Centre Avenue,
Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Email: kento.sonoda.md@gmail.com
ORCID
Kento Sonoda https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3339-9543
REFERENCE
1. Japanese Community Outreach Pittsburgh [internet] [cited January
2021]. Available from https://sites.google.com/prod/view/pitts​burgh​
-­jco/
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