"But when their voices are silent it doesn't mean that they
don't have any needs. They have tremendous needs."
- - Lin Zhan
These "silent voices" belong to Asians and Asian Americans - -too many of them - - who lack adequate health care. Lin Zhan, a faculty member at UMass Boston's College of Nursing, is the editor of Asian Voices: Asian and Asian-American Health Educators Speak Out, newly published by the National League for Nursing Press.
The thirteen chapters of Asian Voices, reflecting what Zhan describes as an "overwhelming" response to a call for manuscripts, range widely. Among the topics are major health problems of Asian American Pacific Islanders; elderly Filipino women in Florida who formed a society of "Golden Dreamers" to fight loneliness and lack of health care; HIV/AIDS among Asian Americans; Buddhist ethics and end-of-life issues; rising mortality rates among Korean women; cultural factors affecting Chinese Americans' pursuit of health; the challenge to the Japanese health care system of a rapidly growing elderly population; traditional Chinese medicine; and (of particular interest at UMass Boston) "problem-based learning," a tutorial approach culturally appropriate for Asian American students.
Major themes emerge: the absence of useful data on Asian American health conditions; how language barriers and poverty block access to health care; how Asian beliefs and practices frequently conflict with their American equivalents; the destructive myth of Asian Americans as a "model minority." For many Asian Americans - - especially recent immigrants, who may be desperately poor and isolated but are nonetheless ashamed to reveal the difficulties they face - - the American health care system is a "puzzle" that contributes to "tremendous uncertainty and fear."
Asian Voices does not attempt completeness. Instead, it aims to increase the skill and wisdom of health care providers and educators by helping to "expose, case by case, little by little" the real health care experiences of Asian people and communities.
- - By Jeffrey Mitchell