New mini-medical school seeks to engage, serve Sacramento’s Vietnamese community
Understanding healthy aging and dementia in population of Vietnamese origin
"Oanh Meyer, assistant professor of neurology at UC Davis School of Medicine, has a long history of working with the Asian American communities in Sacramento on mental health and Alzheimer’s disease issues. With her team in the Diversity and Disparities Lab, she engages in community outreach efforts to better understand and fight health disparities. In her line of work, she has seen a great need in underserved communities for access to trusted sources of health information, especially among the Vietnamese community.
'Neighborhoods immediately adjacent to and south of the UC Davis Health campus are home to a large population of Vietnamese origin,' Meyer said. 'Many Vietnamese Americans in Sacramento are foreign-born, lack access to culturally appropriate care and are medically underserved.'
Meyer decided to partner with Asian Resources Inc (ARI), a non-profit organization, to engage with the Vietnamese community in Sacramento. She proposed launching a Vietnamese mini-medical school (VMMS) program to raise health literacy among immigrants and refugees of Vietnamese origin.
VMMS is an educational community outreach effort sponsored by the Clinical and Translational Science Center’s (CTSC) Integrating Special Populations into Research (INSPIRE) program and the UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC). Meyer, who is INSPIRE co-director and ADRC faculty member, discussed VMMS during this week’s UC Davis Principles of Community events."