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Date Accessed: 6/10/2010

Were they mostly 1st generation or 2nd generation? Most were 1st, I would say. My parents came over from the Philippines right after the Martial Law was inducted in 1973 and I think a lot of people came over around the same time. Regarding the population, if you think about it, it’s still not that many. Out of a population of a 50-mile radius, which is probably around 100 or 200,000 people, 1 out of 2,000 are Filipino. It’s a pretty low number. That’s also why my parents didn’t bother to teach me Tagalog because they said, “You’re never going to use it”. Actually, until I moved to California, I didn’t really know the difference between a Filipino person and a Chinese person. So when I moved to California, it was pretty much a culture shock because I moved to Diamond Bar and there were Filipinos and Asians everywhere.

So you didn’t understand Tagalog growing up? No, and still unfortunately don’t know too much of it at all. I did do reading outside while I was at UCLA for a while, so I did pick up the Tagalog books and really tried to learn it while I was there. But then I found myself, at the end of 2nd year I didn’t really use it that much. So it’s pretty much gone. Which is why I was also interested in doing the Filipino translation because I found that my best way of learning a language is just to practice it. My Spanish is actually getting better now, and it’s only because I use it on a daily basis. And it’s only when I use it in the hospital. I’m starting to really interview in Spanish now, so I’m hoping the same thing can happen with Tagalog.

2) Where he did you go for undergraduate/medical school?

The first 2 years I went to Berkeley. But I missed LA, my friends, and family and ultimately decided to transfer. Eventually went to UCLA for 3 years, so I took my time there. Then I went to UCLA for medical school.

3) Any specialty?

I actually thought I would be in LA for my whole life and didn’t think I would be moving very much. I would’ve planned to stay in LA, but I met a girl and when she got into UCSF for residency, I ended up moving up there as well. So I went to Stanford for Internal Medicine.

4) What is it like being a Filipino doctor in America? Did you feel like you had any difficulties being Filipino?

No…I didn’t. I don’t think so. I think being interested and understanding in different cultures and learning about them, not just Filipino culture, is helpful in interacting with patients. I think that having some knowledge about the Filipino culture when I interact with Filipino patients help. But also learning about other cultures is really helpful.  But there haven’t been any real challenges in being a Filipino doctor.

5) Let’s talk about the general Filipino population. What are the high risk factors for Filipinos? Please explain?

I can say that in general it’s not studied as much as it should be. Much of the funding goes to studying those that are mostly Caucasian population and the African-American population. And now, Latino is starting to catch on. But there aren’t enough good studies that can inform us for sure. So all I can say is what I tend to see. And it isn’t formally studied enough.  And you’ll see diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, coronary artery disease, adrenal disease, and all the other things are all complications of diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol and smoking, depending on who is coming over. Those are all the things that are prevalent in the population. I think there is also quite a bit of mental disorders, although they are quite underestimated in Asian cultures in general because Asians tend to basically deny that they exist.  There’s PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder)…just a lot of mental disorders that are under-diagnosed or under reported.

6) Any struggles you have observed for Filipinos with the health care system here?

The biggest one is going to be language barriers by far, and that’s a constant struggle.  It’s a two-edge sword that many Filipinos speak some degree of English, and some of them quite well. What makes it tough is that, if you don’t have a translator for Tagalog, it makes it easy to misunderstand, since there are a lot of double negatives in Tagalog. For example, if you ask a question that you need a yes or no answer to, the biggest thing that I’ve seen that’s a problem for Filipino patients and doctors who don’t speak Tagalog (like me), it’s hard to nail down if they mean “yes” or “no.” Sometimes, because of the way the people respond and you’re not aware of it, you make completely wrong decisions of their diagnosis and medications because you thought the person said “no” and the person said “yes.”

7) Can you give us some advice? Tips for Filipino communities?

That’s a tough one because for me, the way that I practice medicine, I never really tell people what to do. I tell people the consequences of their actions from a health point of view, and leave it up to them to decide whether they want to follow it or not because people have a lot of things in their lives and make their own decisions. And I tell people... the biggest thing you can do for your health is to stop smoking, but I’m not telling you to do that because it’s up to you. It’s your responsibility to yourself. I can tell you based on studies how much likely you are to have cancer, but ultimately, it’s up to you.

The things I tend to see are lifestyles with food and everything. On one hand, food is very important to any culture. Food is very central. So its hard to say, don’t eat this or don’t eat that because although a lot of Filipino food tend to be high in carbohydrates or high in fat and salt, it’s just a lot of high fat and salty food. On the other hand, from a cultural point of view, it’s like “what do you mean don’t eat the food that I eat?” But it is contributing, no doubt, to the level of diabetes that we see. If you cooked things 50 years ago in the Philippines, a lot of people didn’t have access to the food that they regularly eat now in America because it was just too expensive to have, like meat, you know? So in the Philippines, they didn’t have this much problem as they are now. But of course now that everything is getting cheaper, nowadays diabetes and hypertension is getting quite high over there.  Diets changed in general, regardless if you’re in the US or in the Philippines. It’s possible, I would say, perhaps eating less of this food and eating more of the vegetables and getting more physical activity. But this is the same advice really to anybody, in general just eating better and exercise more.  Sometimes that is all I can say, because people have different ways of how they choose to manage their lives.

I don’t want to generalize, and it’s not my style to say, “You should do this or you should do that” because it is a very paternalistic style. I really like patients to take responsibility in their own health because they’re the only ones that can really change it at the end of the day.