ocvietammd

Pasadena, California —  March 7, 2013.  Việt Nam California Radio’s (VNCR 106.3FM)  weekly Việt language healthcare radio program, Sức Khỏe Và Bạn (SKVB, aka “To Your Health, Friend!”), won the New America Media (NAM) for 2013 Broadcast Award for “Outstanding Reporting on Health and Healthcare.”  This esteemed honor was bestowed upon SKVB for its inaugural 6-part series entitled, “The Affordable Care Act (ACA) and You, Friend!”  which launched in the Summer 2012, shortly after the landmark US Supreme Court’s decision to uphold most of the ACA’s provisions.

Over the course of 6 weeks, “The ACA and You, Friend” distilled  the complicated healthcare law into weekly bite-sized, more palatable 15-20 minute tutorials to empower everyday Viet-Americans to be better healthcare consumers.  The NAM judges deemed the winning series “meaningful, substantive, important … and timely.”  These included deciphering the alphabet soup of the new medical-speak:  IM or “Individual Mandate”, HIE or Health Insurance Exchanges, P4P or Pay for Performance, EHRs or Electronic Health Records, MU or Meaningful Use, etc. which today’s New Americans will need to master in order to get the healthcare they need once the ACA fully rolls out.

Mai-Phương Nguyễn, MD (executive producer of Sức Khỏe và Bạn) commented during her acceptance speech at the Award Ceremony:

“By honoring our Sức Khỏe và Bạn health program, you [NAM] have validated our ability to not only educate but also to empower and to elevate overseas Vietnamese to secure the healthcare we ALL deserve.  My ambitious hope is that SKVB will continue to serve as a prescriptive to heal age-old wounds of war; to bridge East and West, North and South AND … to connect the old and newer generations of Việt-Americans, meanwhile help them better negotiate mainstream American society.”

The Southern California Ethnic Media Awards ceremony was held at the KPCC Crawford Family Forum and was sponsored in part by the California Community Foundation, The Los Angeles Multi-cultural Leadership Network (LAMLN) and KPCC/Southern California Public Radio.  NAM is a San-Francisco based umbrella organization whose mission is to promote the diverse voices of ethnic media outlets in print, broadcast and social media.

***

The following is the full transcript of the ideal acceptance speech by Dr. Mai-Phương Nguyễn for the award.  If you watch the YouTube video, you will see that her actual speech was much truncated.  While not actually ‘perfect English,’ she managed to elicit laughter, a few tears and accolades afterwards…in under 180 seconds.

Dr. Mai-Phương:

“Thank you! … for this auspicious award.  There are 3 of us on stage, so that means I will keep my statements under 3 minutes…I promise!  {coquettish smile…this, in response to emcee Patt Morrison’s reprimand that the time keeper would be very strict and they would play the Jaws Movie theme song for those who go over the rationed 60 seconds.}

But to give a bit of historical context to the gravity of this incredible, present moment:

38 years ago, next month on April 29th, at the tender age of 6, I witnessed first-hand the withdrawal of the US troops out of Saigon, marking the end of the 2nd Indochinese-American War.  Since that historic “Operation Frequent Wind,”  MY family and thousands of millions of SE Asians refugees thereafter—including Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian and Hmong—would be displaced for over 2 decades in search for new homelands, so we could live in freedom!  As political REFUGEES, we lost our countries and our entire ways of life.  We had to quickly ‘let go’ of everything we knew and cherished to hurry-up and embrace new languages and cultures to find a new place under the sun, we could claim as “Home.“

But in the US, no matter how long we live here, no matter how perfect we master the English language (often times losing facility of our own mother tongues); and even though our taste buds would invariably evolve to crave American flavors and pop culture, all too often, we first generation, NEW AMERICANS, have a really hard time calling this country HOME.  Why?  Because too often, the mainstream media either ignores us, misrepresents us or worse, painfully caricaturizes and baffoons us.

Fast forward 17 years, again on the exact same date, April 29th, in the year 1992, following the Rodney King verdict–as a young medical student living just a few miles from this very Crawford Family Forum while at USC Medical School, except near the barrios of El Sereno in East LA, I had the unfortunate privilege of bearing witness once again to massive violence and trauma.  This time, I watched with horror at the numbers of  black, brown and yellow-skinned bodies I had to help sew up, as they rolled into the ER at LA County-USC General Hospital.  These were brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, fathers and mothers who took to the streets in violent outrage–to protest against an America they felt discounted or devalued them…and one that did not protect them against abusive authority figures!

And now, 21 years later…HERE! Tonight, with all of YOU beautiful, diverse ethnic media friends and family, under the generous auspices of New America Media!  How incredible to think that a humble, local radio station called, Việt Nam California Radio (VNCR 106.3FM)–who has made its home in the heart of the most vibrant of Little-Saigons right in Orange County, and who has given voice to our Vietnamese communities in the Diaspora since 1993, is being recognized for excellence in broadcast journalism.

By honoring our Sức Khỏe và Bạn health program, you’ve validated our ability to not only educate but also to empower and to elevate overseas Vietnamese to secure the healthcare we ALL deserve.  My ambitious hope is that SKVB will continue to serve as a prescriptive to heal age-old wounds of war; to bridge East and West, North and South AND … to connect the old and newer generations of Việt-Americans, meanwhile help them better negotiate mainstream American society.

In Vietnamese, we have a poetic maxim, “Một cây làm chẳng nên non, 3 cây chụm lại nên hòn núi cao.”    

Which means, “a single tree alone, at best, forms a small mound. 3 trees united, can form a high mountain.”   Or, perhaps a better translation would be to quote my 3 year old son’s favorite superheroes, The Wonder Pets:  “What’s it all about?  TEAMWORK!” 

Thank you to SKVB’s co-producers (standing here beside me).   First, is Viet-Franglais translator extraordinaire: the beautiful and talented Vanessa Hồng Vân Nguyễn, who helps me find the right Việt words to articulate my complicated thoughts and ideas in English back into a mother tongue I lost somewhere along my arduous acculturation journey to become “American.”  And second, infinite gratitude to our ever-patient sound editor, Thanh-Hương Lê, who refines the show and makes me sound intelligible and semi-fluent in Vietnamese!

Finally, the other triad whom I must thank for this fantastic moment are my parents: Papa Son Văn Nguyễn, và ma très chère maman, Bạch Mai, whose courage, sacrifices, elegance and eloquence inspire all who know them to live generously, in the compassionate service of others.  And lastly, I need to thank my partner in life: my brilliant husband and best friend, film director Đức Nguyển, whose unconditional love and touchstone support–even when he doesn’t fully understand my impossible dreams–mean the world to me!  Thank you for taking care of the doc, so she can take care of so many others.  Và xin thành thật cảm ơn, New American Media, for this high honor!

Here’s to OUR health, Friends!  (Respectful bows)