![]() ![]() At that point, she had a realization about her family being treated differently: doctors not listening, forcing her parents to sign papers they didn’t understand and taking medical actions without the full consent of her sister. She says she didn’t notice the discriminatory practices her family experienced until she went to college and started working in the medical field. Vang was her sister’s caregiver as well as the interpreter and mediator between her parents and doctors. There was no follow-up until she became critically ill her senior year of high school,” says Vang. “My parents knew nothing about that condition, were not familiar with Western medicine and didn’t trust the people here. She has a sister with Bardet-Biedl syndrome, a genetic disorder, who was misdiagnosed when she was born. She says where she started to feel true discrimination was in medicine. Vang is the daughter of Hmong refugees from Laos and was born and raised in Montana. When she moved to New York City for her master’s degree, Lee says she experienced a culture shock, but living in a place where most people looked different from her gave her an appreciation of her own background and opportunities to learn about other cultures. “So I didn’t have the unfortunate event of having to meet doctors who didn’t completely get who we were because all of my doctors grew up exactly like how we did.” “When I was growing up, all my doctors – from pediatricians to optometrists to dentists – everyone spoke Mandarin or Taiwanese, which helped because my mom only knew how to speak these languages,” she adds. “I pretty much grew up around people who looked exactly like me, and it didn’t make me feel like I was out of place or unwelcome by any of the communities in SoCal,” says Lee. She grew up surrounded primarily by Asians and very few individuals from Black and Latinx populations. ![]() Meanwhile, Lee was born in Taiwan and immigrated to East Los Angeles when she was 8 years old. When he was older, Lin was a caretaker for his mom, who was fearful of going to the doctor and had to undergo cancer treatment with doctors who didn’t understand her. I constantly refer back to those memories because I am proud to be Asian American, but at the same time, I never felt like I fully belonged here.” They felt it was OK to make fun of how I looked, how I talked and the food I brought to school. “I remember being constantly made fun of on the bus by kids who had never seen an Asian person before in their life. “A lot of this was driven through personal stories of myself growing up, coming to a completely new country, not knowing anything,” says Lin, who was born in China and grew up in Minnesota. Other impetuses for the project were their individual experiences growing up Asian American in different parts of the country. Lin joined together with classmates and co-founders Joyce Lee, MS, and Iaong Vang, finding motivation to start this project during the COVID-19 pandemic when anti-Asian racism and hate speech surged. “People don’t really know how diverse this population is – don’t really know our stories, don’t really know the challenges that have been experienced by a lot of these populations, especially in the realm of health care,” says HAAPIE co-founder and executive director Ming Lin, MS, a third-year MCW medical student. Through a set of online modules, the inaugural curriculum includes a local spotlight on the Hmong community, plus case studies on cancer, diabetes, mental health and cardiovascular diseases. The Health Advancement for Asian Pacific Islanders through Education (HAAPIE) Initiative raises awareness about health issues through various lenses including historical trauma and social determinants of health. Three MCW medical students are creating an educational pipeline for future health care providers to become better equipped to care for Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) populations. Student-Led HAAPIE Initiative Educates Health Care Professionals on Cultural Intelligence, Improved Care for Diverse Populations.
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