February Reflections: Healing Across Cultures and Confronting Medical Injustice

Honoring Lunar New Year: Cultural Travel, Family, and Safety

February is a time of vibrant celebration for many Asian communities as Lunar New Year arrives. Across the world, families reunite, ancestral rituals are honored, and streets glow with red lanterns and firecrackers. As a public health advocate, this time of year reminds me of the intersection between cultural joy and health planning—especially during the busiest travel season for millions.

From COVID precautions during family reunions to ensuring culturally sensitive care for elders and immigrants, Lunar New Year is not just a holiday—it’s a reminder of how care must be attuned to heritage. In healthcare, that looks like honoring language access, dietary needs, and patient traditions that influence healing.

Black History Month: A Legacy of Pain and a Path Toward Justice

At the same time, February is Black History Month—a moment to not just celebrate excellence, but to reckon with truth. As a Black woman in healthcare advocacy, I carry the weight of a history that includes both resilience and systemic harm. One of the most searing texts I’ve encountered is Medical Apartheid by Harriet A. Washington. It chronicles centuries of medical experimentation and abuse inflicted on Black bodies—from the horrors of J. Marion Sims’ unanesthetized surgeries on enslaved women, to the Tuskegee syphilis study, to modern disparities in maternal mortality.

The legacy is not distant. It shows up today in pain that is underestimated, concerns that are dismissed, and trust that must be rebuilt.

Reclaiming Care and Redefining Trust

To confront this history is not to get stuck in it. It’s to transform it.

I think about the patients who still hesitate to seek care because of intergenerational stories of harm. I think about the Black and Brown survivors I’ve supported as a Crisis Volunteer Advocate—people whose voices were so often ignored until someone sat beside them, listened, and believed. These moments reaffirm that presence is power, and that trust is earned through consistency, transparency, and humility.

From History to Action

As we honor both Lunar New Year and Black History Month, I invite readers to think about what healing looks like in your community. It may start by asking different questions. By believing people the first time. By remembering that the body holds memory—not just physical pain, but historical scars.

We are the generation tasked with ending cycles of harm in medicine. We do so by learning the history, uplifting the stories, and creating a new one—with justice at its core.

Charts Unwritten