All right, so yeah, welcome everyone. As more people come in, we'll give a few minutes for everyone to kind of pop on, but I do have a few slides that I can talk about. So this event primarily is for us to kind of get to know one another, get to know kind of how we can support each other in the Asian physiatry community. And the month of May is Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, so I thought it was a good opportunity for us all to meet up. Even though it's virtual, hopefully at annual assembly we can also meet in person as well. So let me go through some slides. So just a little bit about myself. I am a clinical assistant professor at Stanford University. I primarily specialize in hand and upper extremity care, so outpatient neurologic and orthopedic conditions relating to the hand to the shoulder. I'm not really the focus of our talk today is that stuff, but happy to answer any questions you guys might have about that as well. So a little bit about this month. So now the official name of it has gotten longer in the past two or three years. Now it's Asian American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. The reason for this developing was that in 1978, the House of Representatives wanted to have a way to celebrate Asian Americans through two Asian Americans in the House, I believe at the time, wanted this to occur. So it was passed for that the first 10 days of May, so we're actually kind of out of that window right now, was called Asian Pacific Heritage Week. It took a while for it to get officially put into effect, but by 1990, they were able to extend it out to a full month called the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. And then Obama in 2009 renamed it to Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month. And now in 2021, Biden extended it to Native Hawaiians as well. So why the month of May? So the House of Representatives in the 1970s, 1980s chose this month for two reasons. One was in May 7th, in 1843, the first Japanese immigrant arrived in the United States, Nakahama Manjiro. He worked as a translator primarily in the United States when he came over, but that was one of the reasons. And the second was that on May 10th, in 1869, the Golden Spike was driven into the first transcontinental railroad. Even though the Chinese labor that was used was not invited to that celebration event, it was still a landmark moment for why a lot of Asian Americans first arrived in the United States. So with those two events was why the U.S. chose May as the month to celebrate Asian American heritage. In terms of medicine itself with Asian Americans, the first Asian American graduated from University of Southern California in 1916, and it was Dr. Margaret Chung. So there still was a lot of racism at the time. Even though she completed medical school in the typical amount of time, the four years, she was denied any internship and was actually then kind of settled for work as a surgical nurse in the LA area after she graduated. Eventually, she was accepted for an intern position in Chicago at Mary Thompson's Women's and Children's Hospital, and she completed a general residency at Kentucky State Hospital, also in the Chicago area, as part of Cook County over there. With that, she then returned to LA in 1918. So just two years later, a pretty short internship and residency. And even though her residency was actually in treating medical conditions, psychiatric patients, she actually returned as a surgeon in 1918 and also practiced OB-GYN care for a period of time. And then eventually in 1922, she opened a small office herself in the San Francisco Chinatown area to treat local Chinese American population to help that particular community. And she's actually known to be very involved in improving the health care outcomes for the Chinese American community in that area. She also during the war did a lot of efforts to help treatment of patients at that time too. So that's our first step into medicine as Asian Americans. Then there's just a little bit about how things are now with racial diversity and ethnic diversity in PNR specifically. So this was a study done in 2017, just looking at what's the ethnicity and race breakdown in our specialty. So overall, we find that Asians actually have a fairly large representation in our field amongst applicants in PNR. It's about 27%, similar to all medical specialties. So we're about a quarter of applicants. In terms of trainees, we're about one fifth of trainees. And then that continues on as junior faculty, about one fifth of the stay on as that. As going up the ranks though, as people become associate and full professors, it drops down to only about one tenth. So I think there's a good number of us either practicing academically as well as in the community. So I'm hoping that through AAPNR, we're able to kind of connect everyone, not just the people working in academics, so that we can all get to know each other, see how we can support each other to get to the career goals that we're hoping to get to. This is another study looking at faculty diversity trends from 2000 to 2018. And you can see that for a while, academic medicine leaders decreased in our percentage of the leaders in our field going from 9% in 2007 down to I think at the lowest was 4.7% in 2013. This seems to be improving a bit over time. And we're technically still better than a lot of the other racial and ethnic minorities in our field in moving up that academic ladder. But certainly some more progress can be made on that front as well. And then this was another study looking at just kind of where different ethnicities fell, racial groups fell in terms of winning the awards that AAPNR offers for recognizing members of our field. And overall, we are again higher than the other minority groups. However, in terms of overall percentage of winning these awards, whether they mean something or not is about kind of 15 to 20% at the most. So and if you look at the totals, it's probably just one or two in each category for these awards that have been around for decades. So I wanted to use the next few slides to kind of celebrate the ones who have won these awards to kind of learn a little bit about what physiatrists have done, Asian physiatrists have done in our community. So for Lifetime Achievement Awards, we had one recipient of this in 2011. This is Dr. George Verghese. He does electrodiagnostic medicine and is a pioneer in that area. In terms of distinguished member awards, we had winners in 2005, 2011, and most recently in 2022. Dr. Chino is a physiatrist who practices mostly in Japan and did a lot of work on initial development of protocols for stroke rehabilitation. Dr. Vasudevan worked on kind of a multidisciplinary approach to chronic pain management, which is what was a lot of his papers. And then Dr. Kim, and I believe she's in Texas, kind of built out pediatric rehabilitation for specificity management. And then Pass4Heart Legacy Award recipients. So this is about kind of mid-career research awards. So Dr. Katsoda, sorry if I mispronounce any of these, did some work on lumbar spinal stenosis, Dr. Rao on femoral acetabular impingement, and Dr. Jane on some rotator cuff tears. This award is actually no longer, I don't think it's, oh, actually no, not this one. The next one, this is no longer one that's actively being offered, but the Distinguished Clinician Award is where we've had the most representation, I think. Starting in 1994 with Dr. Eng, she created like home care services for her pediatric rehab patients. Dr. Lee worked at NYU, I think initially at Rusk, doing work in acupuncture as well as music therapy and inpatient rehabilitation. Dr. Watanabe is in Texas working on brain injury recovery. Dr. Chotan did some work on electrodiagnostics and Dr. Mukai on interventional spine. So yeah, these are kind of our award winners so far. I'm hopeful that some of the members on our call today will be future award recipients as well and kind of help see how we can kind of advance Asian physiatry as a field, as Asian physiatrists. So that's all I really had in terms of slides. I thought it was just like a little bit of interesting information to give me a little bit of a chance to kind of look back on our heritage within the field as well as kind of generally across the United States. But I think if you guys have questions about it, I have to go into some of that stuff a little bit more or we can kind of introduce ourselves and kind of talk about kind of, I was just thinking we talk first to kind of introduce your name, where you're practicing, what type of practice type you're in, how you celebrate your heritage. I'll answer these myself too. I know some of these are kind of weird. And then how we can support each other in this member community because yeah, I've been the Asian physiatry chair for I think now three years. I've done some networking events over the years, some stuff about racial disparities, but hoping to kind of see what people want out of this as well as for in-person events at annual assembly as well. So I'll go first. So you can call me Ray. I practice in Stanford. So I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area. I've been here about three years now. Before that, I did residency at Spalding, did medical school at Northwestern. So I've been around the United States quite a bit before this, but originally I am from the Bay Area. So I was happy to kind of move back here. I do primarily outpatient MSK, focusing on the upper extremity. Currently trying to figure out some more research projects in terms of how we can improve non-operative care for upper extremity. For AAPI Heritage, I always wondered how people celebrate it. In the Bay Area, there's actually quite a few AAPI Heritage events that are around, including like movie screenings and things like that. I haven't personally been to any of them myself yet because I'm not sure what crowd these things draw, but definitely am pretty into Asian food. So that's a big way in terms of celebrating, like one being in the Bay Area with my family is one way, and then being able to celebrate the diversity of Pali food in my area. And then for this membership community, I'm hoping primarily to see, I'm hoping to develop a little bit of a mentorship program, because I think there's a lot of people that get stuck in, as you saw in the percentage of people going from residency applicant to a resident to faculty, there's that drop on each step of that ladder. So I'm trying to hope to create some mentorship so that we can help prevent those drops across that area. Good. So we have a few people on this call today. Let's see. So we have five of us. I'll have Rondi go next because I know him. And then we'll go and kind of see what each person says. All right. Thanks, Rondi. Hi, everyone. My name is Rondi Laszlo. I'm a faculty assistant professor over at the University of Rochester. I sub-specialize in sports medicine. So treating a lot of sports and musculoskeletal injuries in my practice. Let's see, as far as celebrating my AAPI heritage, so I'm Filipino. So I think celebrating it with food, certainly cooking and also eating. Let's see what else. I'm also originally from the San Francisco Bay Area. So here in Rochester, New York, not as big of a Filipino community or Asian community, but certainly there is one here. So there have been several events, both actually through the University of Rochester as well as just in the community. So attending those events and meeting other people, going to festivals as well. I've been down to New York City, checking out some of the Asian festivals there, Filipino festivals as well. And as far as supporting each other in this membership community, I think just connecting with each other and networking opportunities like this to learn what people are doing in their physiatry practices, figuring out ways for things like mentorship and advice, just figuring out what issues people are facing and being able to help each other out in that way. Awesome. Yeah. I don't think I've been to a Filipino festival itself before. Is there a certain holiday that they usually have that festival around or do they have different street fairs at different times? I've been to, there's a Philippines Fest in New York City that I've been, that I've visited. Here, there's various events, through the churches, for example. So certain festivals or feast days or around Christmas time, things like that as well. Awesome. Cool. Awesome. Well, thanks, Randy. Welcome to the call, to the networking meeting. I'm just gonna go down the list of how I was presenting on mine. So next would be Andrew. Yeah. Hi. My name is Andrew and I'm currently a PGY4 resident who's finishing up in just a couple weeks. And I'm currently finishing up residency at Carolina's Rehab in Charlotte, North Carolina, originally from the LA area in California. I actually haven't lived in California since high school, but fortunately I've been really lucky to accept an offer at UC San Francisco. And so I'll be joining faculty at UCSF for my first faculty position starting later this year. And I'll be outpatient for that position, kind of doing a hodgepodge of different things. And so being going to be doing some EMGs, spasticity, P&O, MSK. So lots of different things that I enjoy about PMR that we can do a lot of different things. And so that's going to be my position starting later this year. And then to be honest, I don't have like a good way that I've actually really celebrated AAPI except for kind of just sharing about what like my heritage is in general with other people and so a lot of places I've gone for undergrad or med school and residency I've been like the token Asian which was like quite like a you know weird kind of surreal change in life like growing up in California where there's plenty of Asians and then going to places where I was like the only Asian and so growing up I think I kind of just took a lot of my upbringing heritage for granted because they never had to think about being Asian and then once I left California then it was a lot like more realer and so I think since then I've actually kind of you know maybe a backwards way kind of become more Asian in a sense or more proud about being Asian in a sense because I've just been more intentional about sharing kind of heritage things so I guess that's how in a less kind of direct way of celebrating my heritage I'm just able to kind of share it with other people so different things throughout the year that are like based off of just like different AAPI type of holidays or things that come up in like the news and like the easiest gateway is always food like y'all are mentioning and so a lot of like friends in different places have been able to just you know start there and then kind of explain some background things related to food in regards to what I'm trying to get out of this is I think because of where I've gotten to school and my training it's often felt like like I don't know like in terms of like mentorship and like seeing people kind of down the road that look like me and trying to like emulate their career paths like there hasn't really been a lot of that and so just trying to find other people that are further down the road than me that I can glean wisdom and kind of advice from and it's it was funny just trying to navigate all of like medical education since there's always that stereotype that there's so many Asians in healthcare and yet like at least where I've trained that wasn't the case and so it's kind of just like this weird like everyone's saying there's so many Asians being doctors and yet like I don't know any other I know very few other Asians in doctors at least in the immediate spaces I've been and even less so in people with people who are in positions of leadership or authority and so hoping to yeah just network further to have more guidance there. Awesome well I welcome you to the Bay Area. Yeah. Everyone feel free to chime in too it doesn't have to be me responding to each one but that's awesome that so UCSF so you'll be working with some of our good colleagues Dr. Zhang, Dr. Karandikar Pali. Are you going to be in the San Francisco location or the Marin one? Yeah I'm going to be in the San Francisco one yeah that's like I think their main orthopedic site. Awesome awesome yeah it's a good they have a good crew there I think Dr. Zhang make sure that everyone kind of has good mentorship from my understanding from a faculty standpoint so you'll get some good guidance there she's a superstar she like so she finished residency I think 2018 or so and then she kind of like rose up the ranks super quick so she's a good person to kind of seek advice from regarding that stuff and she's pretty good about mentorship and support and then your comment about the how do you celebrate heritage I think rings true for a lot of us right it's like it's like how do you like this month is created for us to kind of like recognize our heritage but it's like hard to really truly understand how to celebrate it you know like it's like it is a part of you like there's food celebration sure like there's a history component too but it's like how do you develop that sense of like kind of pride in your in that culture and how can you bring that in a way that that you can approach and bring it back to your community so I like your comment on that and it's interesting I was researching for this the AMA is also kind of trying to figure out whether Asian API should be lumped together as one category too just because it's so broad in terms of what that means and each person's experience is so different and cultures are so different within that group with different health disparities in each one so it's interesting that it is lumped together as one group but yeah I think each person will celebrate it differently so thanks Andrew for joining um we'll go on to the next one on our list which was Ivy. Hi everyone I'm Ivy I am currently a third year medical student um in Arizona I go to Midwestern University but the Arizona campus but I'm originally from Sacramento, California so um it's fun seeing the California representation here um practice type I mean obviously I'm still in medical school so just kind of um keeping an open mind about what I want to do I'm planning on applying PM&R um I've always been interested in sports so sports medicine is something that I have looked a little bit into um also inpatient rehab which is my last rotation um I really enjoyed that so I'm curious to see if that's something that I will pursue in the future in terms of how I celebrate my heritage um yeah this question is kind of tough I try to do something I mean I guess I've never really celebrated during the month of AAPI heritage like during May but for Lunar New Year for example I would always have friends over and we would make dumplings together and so maybe I'll organize something this month and have my friends come over to make dumplings um and also just share different types of foods I love trying and exploring different restaurants around the area and how we support each other um I kind of would agree with what others have been saying about mentorship I'm always looking for a mentor um and so attending these networking events have been really helpful um and so yeah I think that's something that would be really helpful for I guess other people too who are trying to find some guidance awesome welcome thanks for joining uh so early in your career yeah especially during third year I feel like that's like the busiest year other than intern year so uh appreciate you making our call um yeah surprising number of California amount of California representation on this call uh we'll see you with the last two kind of where you guys uh next one on my list is Jerry Hey everyone my name is Jerry um unfortunately I'm not from California broke our streak it's okay um so I'm also finishing up my third year medical school applying to PM&RS upcoming cycle um I go to school at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta um I've pretty much been here my entire life um so I did my undergrad at Emory um I guess med school in Atlanta too so um yeah I got the east coast representation over here I guess um in terms of practice type I guess I'm also interested in um sports um I also have some interest in spine as well so I know like there's a new I don't know if it's new but I know there's like a sports and spine um I guess fellowship that kind of like seems kind of cool um but I was like let me get into residency first and then kind of figure that out um I guess in terms of AAPI heritage I guess similar to kind of what everyone's been saying like I don't know if I do anything particularly in the month of May um but um kind of interesting it's like I guess like so Morehouse is HBCU so I'm like the only Asian person here at least in my class and it's just like it's a lot different because I went to Emory and Emory has like plenty and like tons of Asian people so it's kind of uh like a like flip completely but it's been really cool like just kind of like teaching other people my culture and just like learning about the cultures of others um and I think that's kind of like similar like similar to what I was saying it's like on Chinese New Year's like we invite people to our house and make dumplings as well um so I think just being open and just like embracing not just like our culture but other cultures as well um and I guess in terms of like how we can support each other one of the coolest things I actually feel like I've gotten to like witness going to an HBCU is like how supportive like especially like the African community African American community is like supportive of each other um just like knowing people who've like been through similar experiences who look like you and who've like been through things similar to you um like really shines at this institution and I think that's kind of what I'm hoping to kind of like see in this community as well where it's like we can kind of like lean on each other uh just like hear stories and see people who've like been to a similar journey as us who's like maybe lived through um similar experiences as well awesome welcome to it yeah yeah uh both of you and Ivy yeah mentioned that yeah May it is odd that's like kind of put in there I was like why is May chosen as APA month right because it's like it is not a classic there are a few holidays in the month I think in some cultures like sometimes um the Dragon Boat Festival sometimes lands in May for the Lunar New Year and then there's certain um I know some like uh I think like Japanese Children's Day or something like that falls around this area too but uh generally it's not one that people celebrate too much but um so it's like yeah I was wondering what this month like with all the events in the areas like are they doing certain types of food or types of what they're focusing on but um it does feel overrated yeah yeah um and uh your comment about the the mentorship that's found in the uh HBC use right uh that is something that I hope that as Asian Americans we can kind of replicate as well um um it's really awesome to kind of see how that community has built out ways of mentorship and kind of helping each other kind of work their way up the ladder and we do see that in certain pockets I think within the Asian American communities like I think not 100% politically correct to say but like the thing like uh Korean Americans definitely have a little bit more of a of that type of uh grouping just because their community is a little bit smaller but I think in the general Asian American communities there's a little bit less um I don't know if you guys had that experience or not um but that's from my understanding from my Korean colleagues as well about that um so uh yeah definitely hoping that we can kind of do something similar where we can help each other kind of um get to our career goals um welcome Alexander um we're just going through and kind of uh introducing ourselves uh next on my list is Peter um go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself hello everyone I'm Peter Wing unfortunately I'm not from California but I am from Seattle, Washington so still west coast still big Asian community there so at least that counts um I'm a third year medical student um go to ATC University in Arizona but we have a three-person boarding model so starting second year I've been based off um in Brooklyn, New York uh through the NYU Lincoln Family Health Centers so still at the East Coast Veterans Association with Jerry um so practice type unfortunately not yet but um my interests right now are um I've only done rotations in outpatient um interventional sports and spine so that could be the option I really liked or like pain medicine um also I'm getting really interested in cancer rehab actually too so those two but for the inpatient side um but we'll see like I'm still keeping my options open um like we're doing residency and stuff um and then how do I celebrate my AAPI heritage um actually in New York there's a lot of events um that they hope uh have for the this month um and I've like randomly like the other day I went to like a pop-up uh museum featuring Asian artists so um that was cool and that was just like really random I'm very Brooklyn um but there's like there's like food uh festivals um and then um there's like I saw like an Asian comedy show that's happening in New York so there's a lot of events um that I hope to um definitely want to go to um to celebrate this month um and then how can we support each other in the mentorship community um I agree with everyone I think mentorship um I feel like um I wouldn't be here without all the mentorship opportunities um and so especially having like um a mentorship at each level too um that would be helpful in like longitudinal membership um especially with like Asian um psychiatrists or Asian uh upper level like mentors who can understand like the upbringing that we've gone through like uh share the same values and like um the struggles we've been through that would be helpful especially also like form a community uh like attending through these events and also like um I feel like if we do it during the conferences or like have an event at conferences I feel like that would attract more um uh like more Asian communities um yeah to deliver some ideas awesome awesome it looks like we got pretty good outreach to the medical students uh that's awesome yeah um I feel like as a medical so I didn't even hear about PNR as a field until like way later so I'm glad that whatever we're doing is uh increasing the awareness of our field uh earlier on um and then you're uh what are you guys all going to annual assembly this year or thinking about it maybe yeah okay cool yeah uh I was just talking with Carolyn who's um helping us uh with the technical aspects of today kind of uh to see how we can set up something and hopefully we get some type of budget to have a little bit of um I mean San Diego definitely has some Asian food in that area so we can definitely set up like either a formal and formal type of event at the actual um annual assembly because I think networking is going to be a little bit easier in person than on zoom um that way we also kind of break into smaller groups if you guys have things that um to chat with uh specifically with certain people but I know in this format we're a little bit limited with that um cool and then um Alexander go ahead and introduce yourself a little bit too hey everyone can you guys hear me yep okay so hey guys I am Alex location I'm in Dallas Fort Worth area specifically Fort Worth practice type right now I'm a PGY1 finishing up intern year at the Texas Rehab Program practice I guess in the future I'm looking towards general rehab I want to do some inpatient and then have a small amount of time set aside to do outpatient things as well but the future is kind of uncertain right now that's where I'm kind of leaning towards celebrating AAPI heritage I guess like uh in the DFW area in Arlington there's the Asian Times Squares where a lot of restaurants will come by and just have little booths um we see a lot of Vietnamese people in that area a lot of Southeast Asians in that area and then most recently within the past month in March or actually April it went by real quick we had a Earth Day where it was Japanese cultural heritage and it was done at the Botanical Garden so that was one way where they showcased a lot of food and a lot of the um traditional things like the tea ceremony there um and then ways we can support each other in the community um one thing that I kind of thought about is uh so within PMR it's very rare for other positions to kind of have a understanding

group discussion

medical professionals

Asian American Pacific Islander heritage month

physical medicine and rehabilitation

mentorship

community support

heritage celebration

networking opportunities

mentorship within AAPI community

representation in PM&R field