America's healthcare system in the twenty-first century faces a variety of pressures and challenges, not the least of which is that posed by the increasingly multicultural nature of American society itself. Large numbers among the Hmong, immigrants from the landlocked Asian nation of Laos, continue to prefer their own ancient medical traditions. That these Hmong Americans should continue to adhere to a tradition of folk medicine, rather than embrace the modern healthcare system of America, poses questions that must be answered. This book takes up the task of examining Hmong American concepts of health, illness and healing, and looks at the Hmong American experience with conventional medicine. In so doing, it identifies factors that either obstruct or enable healthcare delivery to the Hmong, specifically a target sample of Hmong Americans resident in Colorado. Drawing upon scientific methods of data collection, the research reveals attitudes currently held by a group of American citizens toward health and medicine which run the gamut from the very modern to those which have prevailed in the highlands of Southeast Asia for centuries.

America's healthcare system in the twenty-first century faces a variety of pressures and challenges, not the least of which is that posed by the increasingly multicultural nature of American society itself. Large numbers among the Hmong, immigrants from the landlocked Asian nation of Laos, continue to prefer their own ancient medical traditions. That these Hmong Americans should continue to adhere to a tradition of folk medicine, rather than embrace the modern healthcare system of America, poses questions that must be answered. This book takes up the task of examining Hmong American concepts of health, illness and healing, and looks at the Hmong American experience with conventional medicine. In so doing, it identifies factors that either obstruct or enable healthcare delivery to the Hmong, specifically a target sample of Hmong Americans resident in Colorado. Drawing upon scientific methods of data collection, the research reveals attitudes currently held by a group of American citizens toward health and medicine which run the gamut from the very modern to those which have prevailed in the highlands of Southeast Asia for centuries.

America's healthcare system in the twenty-first century faces a variety of pressures and challenges, not the least of which is that posed by the increasingly multicultural nature of American society itself. Large numbers among the Hmong, immigrants from the landlocked Asian nation of Laos, continue to prefer their own ancient medical traditions. That these Hmong Americans should continue to adhere to a tradition of folk medicine, rather than embrace the modern healthcare system of America, poses questions that must be answered. This book takes up the task of examining Hmong American concepts of health, illness and healing, and looks at the Hmong American experience with conventional medicine. In so doing, it identifies factors that either obstruct or enable healthcare delivery to the Hmong, specifically a target sample of Hmong Americans resident in Colorado. Drawing upon scientific methods of data collection, the research reveals attitudes currently held by a group of American citizens toward health and medicine which run the gamut from the very modern to those which have prevailed in the highlands of Southeast Asia for centuries.

Examines Hmong American concepts of health, illness and healing, and looks at the Hmong American experience with conventional medicine. In this, it identifies factors that either obstruct or enable healthcare delivery to the Hmong.

An unprecedented inside view of the Hmong experience in America.

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, this brilliantly reported and beautifully crafted book explores the clash between a medical center in California and a Laotian refugee family over their care of a child.

Farmers in Laos, U.S. allies during the Vietnam War, refugees in Thailand, citizens of the Western world, the stories of the Hmong who now live in America have been told in detail through books and articles and oral histories over the past several decades. Like any immigrant group, members of the first generation may yearn for the past as they watch their children and grandchildren find their way in the dominant culture of their new home. For Hmong people born and educated in the United States, a definition of self often includes traditional practices and tight-knit family groups but also a distinctly Americanized point of view. How do Hmong Americans negotiate the expectations of these two very different cultures? This book contains a series of essays featuring a range of writing styles, leading scholars, educators, artists, and community activists who explore themes of history, culture, gender, class, family, and sexual orientation, weaving their own stories into depictions of a Hmong American community where people continue to develop complex identities that are collectively shared but deeply personal as they help to redefine the multicultural America of today.

Tragic Mountains tells the story of the Hmong's struggle for freedom and survival in Laos from 1942 through 1992. During those years, most Hmong sided with the French against the Japanese and Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh, and then with the Americans against the North Viemamese.

Healing by Heart is a book of stories--stories of people's search for culturally responsive health care from U.S. providers. It offers resources to providers and institutions committed to delivering culturally responsive health care, paying special attention to building successful relationships with traditional Hmong patients and families. It makes available extensive information about the health-related beliefs, practices, and values of the Hmong people, including photographs of traditional healing methods. Ranging in age from young infants to older adults, the patients in the stories present a wide range of health problems. The clinicians are from family practice, internal medicine, pediatrics, emergency medicine, surgery, obstetrics-gynecology, psychiatry/psychology, and hospice. Each of the fourteen case stories is accompanied by discussion questions as well as two or three commentaries. The commentaries--written by patients, family members, shaman, Western clinicians (including Hmong physicians, nurses, and social workers), medical anthropologists, health care ethicists, social workers, psychologists, and clergy--are rich in personal reflections on cross-cultural health care experiences. Readers are rewarded with a combination of perspectives, including those of Hmong authors who have not previously published in English and scholars with years of professional experience working with the Hmong in Laos, Thailand, and the United States. The editors offer a model for delivering culturally responsive health care with special attention to matters of cross-cultural health care ethics. The model identifies questions health care providers can focus on as they seek to understand the health-related moral commitments and practices prevalent in the cultural groups they serve, ethical questions that arise frequently and with great poignancy in cross-cultural health care relationships, and points to consider when a patient's treatment wish challenges the provider's professional integrity. By sharing stories of suffering, confusion, and success, Healing by Heart couples an accessible method of learning about others with concrete recommendations about how to enhance cross-cultural health care relationships.

"From the perspectives of history and cultural anthropology, the authors consider problems of knowledge in Chinese medicine, the Hindu-Buddhist traditions of South Asian medicine, and the Greco-Arabic traditions of Islamic medicine.".