Art + Medicine

(soft music) It's hard to talk about race in Minnesota in general, because I think we feel like we can and we should treat everyone the same way. And I think that is rooted in a healthy way, but if we treat everyone the same way, we assume everyone's the same. Being Vietnamese-American, being a refugee, when I started doing work in medicine, I gravitated to particularly those who are immigrants and refugees. As the population changed, and as the needs changed, I changed with the population. And so then my equity work had been more around those who were dealing with opioid use disorder. We have a lot of individuals come here that happen to be Indigenous, and I was not doing a great service at first, because I didn't understand what their life was like outside of clinic, so I knew I had to take time and practice to ask questions, to learn more about just individuals and community, beyond just addiction. And I learned the good stuff, the bad stuff, and the everything in between. And then also working with a researching assistant, Koushik Paul, over the last three years, he and I started doing interviews with the Native American community to understand how we can better serve them around opioid use disorder, particularly in primary care clinics, and make it more culturally-centered, or family-centered. And all these connections that we built over time in this shared space has given me a place of joy where I am working with communities that deserve help, should be elevated and celebrated, but they have been also people who are so accepting, and allow me to learn and make mistakes along the way, too.