A cohort of more than 100 Asian American teenagers stepped into white coats over the weekend as part of Hennepin Healthcare’s first Asian Youth with Stethoscopes summit. The event is part of Hennepin Healthcare’s Talent Garden program, which supports historically marginalized youth in pursuing careers in health care.
Moving from floor to floor of Hennepin Healthcare’s Clinic & Speciality Center, Asian Americans ages 12 to 18 listened to the pulse and lungs of a simulated baby, practiced CPR, studied dental instruments, and examined alternative communication devices, among other activities led by medical students and health care professionals.
“We are really hoping to grow the medical providers of tomorrow,” said Talee Vang, PsyD, LP, vice president of health equity at Hennepin Healthcare.
“The purpose of the Talent Garden is to not only plant that seed in these young people, but to also make sure that we are nurturing them as they’re growing,” Vang said.
Nurturing young people’s interest in health care — provided they go into health care fields — may lead to better health outcomes for patients who share their race and/or ethnicity, Vang said.
“A lot of the research shows that racial concordance, or what I might describe as racial matching, has been shown to actually be correlated with better health outcomes,” said Vang, who sees this borne out in her own practice.
“Being a psychologist of color, being a Hmong psychologist, I do know that when I’m talking to patients about concepts, there’s a way to talk about it that’s culturally appropriate, that allows the patient to be more open, to actually understand what I’m asking. That personal experience that I have with patients really demonstrates to me the importance of that cultural understanding and that culturally informed care,” she said.
Cultural understanding can extend beyond race and ethnicity to shared experiences, as it does for May Hang, DNP, APR-N, NP-C, a nurse practitioner at NorthPoint Health & Wellness Center who arrived in the United States when she was 5 years old as a refugee. Hang was part of a group of medical professionals and students who shared their insights on their careers in medicine throughout the summit.
“Part of why I work at North Point is because we see lots of new immigrants, refugees, (and) undocumented individuals with very complex health conditions,” Hang said, adding that for her, the most rewarding part of her job is “when I have parents or a patient that says, ‘You speak another language, you’re not born in this country and here you are, helping me and taking care of me.’ I think it just inspires them and gives them a sense of hope.”
This event is the ninth youth summit held by Hennepin Healthcare, but the first summit held for Asian American youth. Vang said that while there was always a plan to set up a summit for Asian American youth, data indicated that other groups were more underrepresented in medicine.
“One of the things that I want to make sure … as we’re tackling health equity work, is to make sure that we are also following the data, and the data will tell us that the most underrepresented and the most marginalized are our Black population, in fields of medicine especially, and then American Indian and Latine.”
That’s not to say, however, that all Asian Americans are equally represented in the medical field. Asian Americans as a group make up a diverse population of different ethnicities and cultures These complex histories of Asian peoples in America are often swept aside in part by the existence of the model minority myth — a stereotype that all Asian Americans are innately high-achieving, excelling in math and science.
“We know that not every ethnic minority group under the Asian American umbrella is doing well when it comes to education, when it comes to health equity, when it comes to health outcomes,” Vang said.
As an example, she pointed to the work done by the Coalition of Asian American Leaders, which disaggregated data on COVID deaths and hospitalizations in Minnesota from March to December 2020. Based on this disaggregation, COVID was found to be the leading cause of death for Hmong, Karen and Karenni communities in Minnesota, with 49% of all Asian American COVID deaths coming from the Hmong community.
“There is this narrative that Asian Americans are not underrepresented, that Asian Americans are not underserved,” Vang said, “and there’s the model minority myth out there that makes lots of people think that Asian Americans don’t need to actually be uplifted, and that is false. So we want to make sure that we are addressing that by looking at the data, by disaggregating and resisting lumping all of Asian Americans together.”
The summit, supported by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota and Delta Dental of Minnesota Foundation, may be a first step in some of the participants’ journeys towards becoming health care providers. Hennepin Healthcare’s Talent Garden also offers internships for those 16 and up to shadow health care professionals. At Saturday’s event, there was plenty of time for participants to be curious and ask questions.
“I was talking about a ruptured ACL with one kid this morning and he asked me, ‘How do you actually diagnose that in the clinic?’” said Shefali Bijwadia, a third year medical student volunteering at the event.
“So we went over physical exam skills and the swelling you would see,” Bijwadia said. “He was pretty excited about it and I was, too.”
Editor’s note: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota was mentioned as a supporter of this event. It also funds MinnPost’s race and health equity reporting but does not weigh in on editorial decisions.
Deanna Pistono
Deanna Pistono is MinnPost’s Race & Health Equity fellow. Follow her on Twitter @deannapistono or email her at dpistono@minnpost.com.
