SCHOLAR
Organizer
Educator
I am a gay, queer, Vietnamese American scholar-organizer, educator, and lover of Shiba Inus. I am the son of Vietnamese refugees who came to the U.S. from the city of Huế. I grew up in desert-turned-suburbia Fontana, CA, home to a vibrant community of working-class people of color.
SCHOLAR
Organizer
Educator
I am a gay, queer, Vietnamese American scholar-organizer, educator, photographer, and lover of Shiba Inus. I am the son of Vietnamese refugees who came to the U.S. from the city of Huế. I grew up in desert-turned-suburbia Fontana, CA, home to a vibrant community of working-class people of color.
I am a tenure-track assistant professor of anti-racist health policy at the Department of Health Management & Policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
My academic and activist commitments are to issues of health inequities in communities of color, immigrants, refugees, Indigenous people, and LGBTQ people.
I study how queer communities of color cultivate their own cultures of health while resisting racial capitalism and cisheteropatriarchy. I use ethnographic and social network analysis methods to explore how these communities construct various family and kinship structures, and how they use grassroots organizing to create more life-affirming futures. By using a community-based participatory research approach, my scholarship aims to build the capacity of queer people of color to address issues on their own terms and to rethink economic and social policies as a starting point for fostering healthy communities.
I earned my PhD in the Community Health Sciences department at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health with a minor in Gender Studies. I was also a Health Policy Research Scholar, a program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for doctoral students who use research to advance health equity through policy change and to build a Culture of Health.
ABOUT ME
I am a tenure-track assistant professor of anti-racist health policy at the Department of Health Management & Policy at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.
My academic and activist commitments are to issues of health inequities in communities of color, immigrants, refugees, Indigenous people, and LGBTQ people.
I study how queer communities of color cultivate their own cultures of health while resisting racial capitalism and cisheteropatriarchy. I use ethnographic and social network analysis methods to explore how these communities construct various family and kinship structures, and how they use grassroots organizing to create more life-affirming futures. By using a community-based participatory research approach, my scholarship aims to build the capacity of queer people of color to address issues on their own terms and to rethink economic and social policies as a starting point for fostering healthy communities.
I earned my PhD in the Community Health Sciences department at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health with a minor in Gender Studies. I was also a Health Policy Research Scholar, a program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for doctoral students who use research to advance health equity through policy change and to build a Culture of Health.
Engaging with the Vietnamese community as part of an ongoing statewide Vietnamese Health Needs Assessment conducted by the KITH Lab
Engaging with the Vietnamese community as part of an ongoing statewide Vietnamese Health Needs Assessment conducted by the KITH Lab
Recipient of E. Richard Brown Social Justice Award 2023 given by UCLA Fielding School of Public Health
Recipient of E. Richard Brown Social Justice Award 2023 given by UCLA Fielding School of Public Health
2024 – PhD Community Health Sciences with minor in Gender Studies – UCLA
Presenting on culturally responsive aging policy at Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health Policy Research Scholars Summer InstitutePresenting on culturally responsive aging policy at Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health Policy Research Scholars Summer Institute
2019 – MA Asian American Studies & MPH Community Health Sciences – UCLA
2015 – BA Human Biology – Stanford University
NEW ARTICLE
NEW ARTICLE
New theoretical framework drop:
the Asian/American LGBTQ+ Migration and Health Equity (AQMHE) Framework in Social Science & Medicine
New theoretical framework drop:
the Asian/American LGBTQ+ Migration and Health Equity (AQMHE) Framework in Social Science & Medicine
Together with Nguyen Tran, Arjee Restar, and Hy V. Huynh, PhD, we created a framework that specifically attends to the health equity issues experienced by Asian/American LGBTQ+ people.
The AQMHE Framework integrates insights from intersectionality, minority stress theory, Asian critical race theory, critical refugee studies, and queer and trans of color critiques.
Together with Nguyen Tran, Arjee Restar, and Hy V. Huynh, PhD, we created a framework that specifically attends to the health equity issues experienced by Asian/American LGBTQ+ people.
The AQMHE Framework integrates insights from intersectionality, minority stress theory, Asian critical race theory, critical refugee studies, and queer and trans of color critiques.
“On the one hand, it is true that not all families of color affirm their queer sons and daughters. On the other hand, the generalized gay community often feels like a sea of whiteness to queers of color, and thus the imagined ethnic family is often a refuge. It is a space where all those elements of the self that are fetishized, ignored, and rejected in the larger queer world are suddenly revalorized.”
— José Esteban Muñoz, The Sense of Brown
“On the one hand, it is true that not all families of color affirm their queer sons and daughters. On the other hand, the generalized gay community often feels like a sea of whiteness to queers of color, and thus the imagined ethnic family is often a refuge. It is a space where all those elements of the self that are fetishized, ignored, and rejected in the larger queer world are suddenly revalorized.”
— José Esteban Muñoz, The Sense of Brown