- I was born in Saigon, Vietnam in the middle of the war.
And my family immigrated to America
along with a lot of the other Vietnamese diasporas in 1975.
We actually left one week before the fall of Saigon
and we came to California where we had some family
and sort of restarted our lives.
My name is Anthony Pho.
I am an adult nurse practitioner by training.
And at Stanford, I am a postdoctoral scholar
with the PRIDE Study,
which is a large scale and longitudinal study
of LGBTQ people within the Department of Medicine.
To be a postdoc at Stanford
or a clinical scholar is not just inspiring,
but it's a place that challenges your thinking
that helps you to grow as a professional.
It's a very unique situation
as someone who does LGBTQ health research
to work in a place where your bosses come from the community
that you come from.
You have a shared identity literally with the people
that you work with who are there to not only relate with you
as another queer person, but also to relate with you
in your shared desire to advocate for your community.
I work with LGBTQ patients
who experience a lot of discrimination and stigma
in their lives, let alone their healthcare.
The joy of my profession
is sitting down with a patient and having them say to me,
"I've never been able to ask that question before."
"I've never been able to feel so comfortable
with a provider."
Breathe, one here.
One more listen.
The folks that work within Stanford
in the LGBTQ health program
have essentially devoted their lives
to the improvement of queer health for queer people everywhere
and making sure that our people are counted
and that our communities actually have a place at the table
when we look at research
that is for the community and by the community.
I definitely felt like I was an other growing up.
I was very conscious of the fact
that I did not come from mainstream American culture.
When I was younger, I just wanted to fit in
and I just wanted to be like any other American family.
- Tight, tight.
And you seal it with the water.
You can also use egg white. - [Anthony] Yeah.
- You can do the next one so you can learn.
Practice make perfect.
- Or permanent.
- [Anne] Yeah, there you go.
- My mother is a remarkable person.
She's an incredible role model to me.
I've always said to my mother,
"You taught me well
because you have the heart and soul of a nurse."
And she always said to me,
"But I'm not a nurse, I didn't go into healthcare."
And I said, "Oh, but you did, Mom.
Everything that you taught me about the human condition
the care of another human being."
Why am I so passionate about LGBTQ health
in terms of advocating for LGBTQ people
not just from a clinical care point of view
or training the next generation of clinicians,
but also research?
Because we have this terrible history
and we have work to do.
There are huge health disparities within our community.
We're learning that these health disparities
aren't just sexually transmitted infections
and aren't just HIV.
We're learning that they are cancer,
they are chronic cardiovascular disease as well.
And when you layer on top of that race and ethnicity
and combine intersectional identity
with sexual orientation and gender identity,
it's worse, not better.
Patient care is grounding because it is the day to day work
that reminds me of the community that I'm serving
with my research.
And it informs how I think about the hypotheses,
the questions that I want to ask.
That is the human being that is behind the research.