S1Ep3: Dr. Kim Chang: Serving and Advocating for the Medically Underserved

Woke WOC Docs

Dr. Kim Chang is a family medicine physician at Asian Health Services (AHS) in Oakland, CA. In this episode, we learn how her experiences as a doctor and medical director at AHS has shaped her work according to their mission: to serve and advocate for the medically underserved. In this episode, Dr. Chang tells us more about her love for community health centers and health policy work in human trafficking and immigration health. We have a *special request* in this episode as well. The Trump administration has continued their anti-immigration sentiment through a policy called public charge, which seeks to have lawful permanent residence, also known as green-card status, to be denied to greater numbers of legal immigrants for having received public assistance (e.g. Section 8 Housing, Medicaid, Medicare Part D, food stamps). Asian Health Services has created a website to add your comments challenging the Trump administrations’s expansion of the public charge policy. Tune in from 40:42 to learn more. OPPOSE PUBLIC CHARGE! Please add your comments by December 10 here: https://aapiprogressiveaction.salsalabs.org/publiccharge-ahs/index.html. Bio: Kimberly Chang, M.D., M.P.H., is a family physician at Asian Health Services (AHS) in Oakland, California. Previously, Dr. Chang was a Commonwealth Fund Mongan Fellow in Minority Health Policy at Harvard Medical School and Clinic Director at the Frank Kiang Medical Center (FKMC) of AHS. Her health systems experience includes directing the start-up of the FKMC, expanding patients' language access to 10 Asian languages, and directing the implementation of policies, procedures, and protocols into clinical operations. In addition, she provided care for many commercially sexually exploited children and is a co-founder and executive committee member of Health, Education, Advocacy, Linkages (HEAL) Trafficking. Dr. Chang has trained thousands of frontline multidisciplinary professionals on the health care intersect with human trafficking across the United States and internationally to the Compact of Free Association nations in the Western Pacific with the National District Attorneys Association. She served on a technical working group for the Administration for Children and Families, developing a pilot training for health care professionals on human trafficking. Her presentations and publications have focused on cultural competency, human trafficking issues, underserved populations, and global health issues. Most recently, Dr. Chang was elected as the Vice Speaker of the House on the Executive Board of the National Association of Community Health Centers, as well as selected to serve on the National Advisory Committee on the Sex Trafficking of Children and Youth in the United States.