The EthnoMed Podcast
The official podcast of EthnoMed.org, a website based in the Interpreter Services Department at Harborview Medical Center which serves as a cultural bridge connecting providers and patients with resources for cross-cultural medicine. The podcast features provider interviews, community highlights, and topical episodes related to cross-cultural medicine.
The EthnoMed Podcast
Provider Pulse Ep. 19: From Phnom Penh to Harborview - The Journey of Jeniffer Huong
In this moving episode of the Provider Pulse Series of the EthnoMed podcast, we hear the extraordinary life story of Jeniffer Huong — one of Harborview’s original Cultural Care Mediators in the Community House Calls Program, which now serves patients in eight different languages.
Born in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Jeniffer’s early years were shaped by discipline, education, and family aspiration—until the Khmer Rouge forced her family from their home in 1975. She survived years of displacement, labor camps, and loss before escaping to refugee camps in Thailand and the Philippines, and eventually resettling in Oregon.
In this conversation, Jeniffer reflects on the psychological toll of survival, the unspoken trauma carried by many Cambodian refugees, and how those experiences shaped her work at Harborview—helping members of the Cambodian community navigate illness, loss, and the U.S. healthcare system with empathy and cultural understanding.
Her story is one of survival, service, and transformation—reminding us that behind every patient is a layered history of resilience, migration, and healing.
Content Warning: This episode contains discussion of war, genocide, and trauma during the Khmer Rouge period in Cambodia.
Visit EthnoMed.org for additional resources. Follow us on YouTube and Instagram @EthnoMedUW
From Phnom Penh to Harborview: The Journey of Jeniffer Huong
Jeniffer: [00:00:00] when I look back at all those war right now in Russia and Ukraine and Israel and Palestine, and I say, why, why we have this, you know, I haven't over my trauma and then five decade now, and this has happened to these people, you know, the bombing. It's just traumatic. It took me back there and , how they were gonna erase my life.
I keep saying because after what happened in the war in Cambodia, I don't want to deal with [00:00:30] politic because my family was gone and I have this suffering and I don't want to know who's who, who and what. I don't care.
Welcome to the Provider Pulse interview series, part of the EthnoMed Podcast at Harborview Medical Center, where we share stories at the intersection of health, culture, and care. My name is Dr. Duncan Reid, a primary care provider in Harborview's International Medicine Clinic, and Medical director of EthnoMed.
Today's episode features Jeniffer Huong, one of the original cultural care mediators in [00:01:00] Harborview's community house calls program founded in 1994.
For more than 30 years, this program has built bridges between healthcare providers and immigrant and refugee communities. What began with a handful of mediators has grown to 13 cultural care mediators serving patients across Harborview in eight different languages.
Before her decades of service in Seattle, Jeniffer was a young girl in Phnom Penh Cambodia, whose life was transformed by war, survival, and rebuilding. Her journey takes us from a strict academic [00:01:30] childhood in Phnom Penh, through the Cambodian Civil War and the Khmer Rouge, the forced labor camps where she lost most of her family, the refugee camps of Thailand and the Philippines, and finally to a life of service in healthcare serving the Cambodian community.
Duncan: As a warning, this episode references acts of violence, death, and genocide, which were part of the rule of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Although the discussions are not overly explicit, we recommend that younger or sensitive listeners consider skipping this episode [00:02:00] and listen to another EthnoMed podcast episode instead.
Jeniffer: Part One. Childhood in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Duncan: Jeniffer Huong was born in 1963 in Cambodia. She was sent to Phnom Penh by her mother to be raised by her aunt and uncle, an aspiring physician and his wife. She grew up surrounded by books, discipline and expectation.
Jeniffer: My name is Jeniffer Huong and I was born in Cambodia. I was there during the Khmer Rouge [00:02:30] period. I lived through those four year of the Khmer Rouge regime before I came to United States.
My biological father was Chinese from mainland China. Barely spoke Cambodian. My mother is a Chinese Cambodian. I was born in the middle between 12 children.
my mom hadthree miscarriage nine live birth.
But I wasn't with my mom or my sibling because [00:03:00] by eight month old. I was given to her younger sister because her younger sister married and start a life in Phnom Penh capital of Cambodia, because he is going to enter medical school and start working in the hospital.
my mom owned the apartment in Phnom Penh So I pretty much grow up and raised in the city, going through school and live with my legal parents [00:03:30] my aunt and uncle.
Duncan: Were you the only one or did some of your siblings join your own aunt and uncle?
Jeniffer: No, I'm the only one and the only child. At that time, my aunt did not have any children.
Duncan: do you know why you were selected?
Jeniffer: I heard that I was sick a lot, and then in Chinese culture, the superstitious belief. They say when I was not good with my biological mother, it is good to give to other family member to raise it. And then since [00:04:00] my aunt, husband is a doctor, they think I will be well off with them.
So I got to go to schoolAnd I was the only child living with many adult my father was about to get a more formal doctor license . He have everything already set to go to Canada, but four months before that, the Khmer Rouge came. So those dream wasn't happen.
I don't have very much a memory from my childhood because my aunt and uncle were [00:04:30] very strict, expectation I will be like number one in school and there's a lot of manner and, things that I have to do.
I grow up with many adult, like aunt and uncle that came to study in the city.
So pretty much, I don't have a childhood when every time I go play outside, if someone reported me and I got scolded by my aunt and she's pretty mean, Because I grow up with so many adult, I was able to read like age [00:05:00] five, I read Cambodian Magazine, newspaper novel, every kind of book because everybody was study.
And when I work with them, they study, they busy. So I better read something and do something. So I could read everything before entering elementary school, and I started with a French private school.
Duncan: so you grew up as an adult.
Jeniffer: pretty much as an adult
Yeah, the uncle that raised me, he came from a not very poor family. But at the time, going to higher [00:05:30] education is very hard. And his father didn't have anything. So he start with Buddhist literature and everything in French, academically, medically, it's all communicated in French
And the expectation is very high, very strict.
Duncan: So you're always surrounded by older people, it at home or in school.
Jeniffer: All in school or in public
Duncan: so that's the setting, working really hard. And it sounded like your adoptive father and mother big plans to go to [00:06:00] Canada. Everything's all set. And then what are your memories about what happened with the Khmer Rouge?
Part two, historical interlude Cambodia in context
Here is a brief historical context for the Cambodia in which Jennifer was living. After nearly a century of French colonial rule, Cambodia gained independence in 1953 under King Norodom Sihanouk. For a time he remained neutral amid the wars in neighboring Vietnam and Laos.
But by the 1960s, the conflict in Vietnam spilled [00:06:30] across Cambodia's borders. US bombing campaigns against North Vietnamese supply lines, devastated rural provinces and displaced thousands.
In 1970, general Lon Nol led a US backed coup overthrowing Sihanouk, and declaring the Khmer Republic,
The coup deepened instability and Civil War pitting law Knolls forces against a communist insurgency known as a Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot. By April, 1975, the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh.
They abolished money, [00:07:00] schools and religion declaring the creation of Democratic Kampuchea The Khmer Rouge targeted anyone they perceived as a threat to their utopian vision of an agrarian classless society. Leading to the Cambodian genocide from 1975 to 1979. ethnic and religious minorities were targeted, including ethnic Chinese, Vietnamese and Buddhist monks, as well as urban residents, professionals, teachers, and students who were forced into the countryside for Reiducation through hard labor and communal farms where families were [00:07:30] separated.
Duncan: Between 1.7 and 2 million. Cambodians died
from starvation disease or execution, which accounted for roughly a quarter of the population. The Vietnamese invasion ended the regime in 1979. It was into this upheaval that Jennifer Huong, then a young girl was thrust.
Jeniffer: The Khmer Rouge changed the whole thing completely upside down. I remember April 17th, 1975. So the apartment is in the [00:08:00] middle of Phnom Penh and across the street is finance and across on the other side is a big apartment. And each story, like a lot of, celebrity living is the movie star. And next door is a bakery a butcher shop. and behind my, building, it's a French villa.
Duncan: So you're really living in a very exclusive,
Jeniffer: It is in the very wealthy community.
Duncan: the evening of [00:08:30] 1975, April 17, when the Khmer Rouge knock on this door and told us you had to leave in five, 10 minutes. If you don't leave, we can blow up something. It's pretty severely, but actually we know this gonna coming because my biological mother, she's business oriented and she's know the country be collapsing one day.
Jeniffer: She already prepare. My mother know a lot of business people in Thailand, and then we are gonna live in [00:09:00] Thailand.
She's already in Vietnam, in Saigon. But she didn't stay there. I wish she would stay there. And she came through Phnom Penh across Mekong River with all my sibling staying with us in Phnom Penh So we lived together and the Khmer Rouge when they forced us out that evening, I remember how many million of people in Phnom Penh left from many direction.
Duncan: And from that day to now, whoever you lost, you never find it. And they only [00:09:30] told us, you only left your house for three days. All you can take is just a couple piece of clothes and belonging and you will return. But we never return 40, 50 year now. Right. We never return So do you remember that day where they knocked on the doors
Jeniffer: oh yeah, just collected all the belonging and, but a few months before that, a lot of bombing. A lot of bombing, and we had the little basement that go high and put the sand outside and then. I [00:10:00] go to school and one time the bomb was in front of the school and then we were hiding under the ground over there.
It's like what happened in Gaza When I back, it's pretty scary. And that's why I know when I startle. And then I have anxiety when I driving, when I hear this ambulance noise. And I think all those impacted me, which is I learn little by little to recognize, you know, how psychologically impacted I was with this war, you [00:10:30] know, with the fighting.
Duncan: Part Three. Khmer Rouge and Fleeing Phnom Penh.
The Khmer Rouge emptied the capitol, sending millions on foot into the countryside. The next four years were spent under harsh Khmer Rouge rule. Urban evacuees were considered new people and wandered the countryside before being relocated to collective farms in rural Cambodia. The period coincided with mass killings and famine
Between 1.7 and 2 million. Cambodians died
between 1975 and 1979.
[00:11:00] Then when the Khmer Rouge came, you said, you remember everyone's streaming out on the roads, everyone's walking,
Jeniffer: Walking, walking night and day for a month or two. So at that time with my aunt, uncle, his father, his sister, me and then my biological mom, father, and my five sibling, So like, what, 15. We walked day and night. They just told you, keep walking, keep [00:11:30] walking.
And you know what? I didn't have my clothes with me. I have a bag of my book, which I don't need, but I have to get food, you know? And then a lot of people have money, but no market. We cannot use money.
But my mother, because she's business oriented,she's exchange everything into gold and she have the piece of gold were hidden and everybody have a piece of it. And because we can use that later and whatever to survive that what we survive exchange for rice.
[00:12:00] Why like a cup of rice, like this is maybe a little piece of gold. Yeah, that is a traumatic, traumatic experience so we all get to this town, it's called Kampong Speu it's pretty dry no water? No nothing.
Urban dwellers were now reduced to foraging for food and were unfamiliar with the local vegetation. Jeniffer notes that she had never seen rice plants before and confused them for [00:12:30] lemongrass.
And a lot of the Chinese people that walk along they don't know those vegetable, are, eatable or not eatable. And some of them, they eat it and they were poisoned by it, and a lot of them die. we knew some of it, but I couldn't tell. I don't know.
the rice tree, I thought there's a lemongrass. I know lemongrass because in the city they bought it and they know. But I never in the rice field, I couldn't. And I say, why? The, why? There's a lot of lemongrass in there, but there is a [00:13:00] rice field. So this thing is between city life, like to a country, life to a traumatic experience
Duncan: Without food and facing starvation, Jeniffer's family make the decision to board a Khmer Rouge truck leading to the work camps where they would be further separated from one another.
Jeniffer: Leaving Phnom Penh we went to stay in Kampong Speu and another province, but in three months people are dying with starvation. And then my parent. We talk at night because every night there's a, big [00:13:30] truck take people out. We don't know where they take it . So we have a meeting and we decide that we cannot live here because we gonna die without food no matter what.
We have no food to eat. And with the thing that we can exchange, it's not enough food for all of us to survive. We decide wherever they took us, we are gonna go. So we all left and one night they told us now time to go. They call. We climb on the truck. There was a big [00:14:00] truck, and like two, 300 people in there sitting. And the next morning we get up, we in this town, a province called Kampot, one of the provinces have a lot of Chinese born there. They call Hokkien and they are fluent in Chinese, but they are first, second generation Cambodian Chinese so they put us in one of the temple, all these, refugees, you know, the new arrival.
[00:14:30] But many of the people who live in the village, they continue to live like normal. So they have more privileges than us And from there in that city people are rich, so they have a lot of food and we were starving for many months.
So my mom exchange it for rice. The first time we have real rice and soy sauce. You can imagine. I feel so bad. My father, because he's Chinese man, you know, he eat very well and cook very well, and he [00:15:00] had to sacrifice and give it to the kid. I have, a baby brother
He's about four years old. Mm-hmm. And sitting eating the first time, a full meal with rice and chicken and my father cooked very well and ate it like a blessing, but you have no idea where we go next.
we haven't got to the full destination yet. So from there they say we are gonna go [00:15:30] like 100 kilometer into the rural area. Keep going, keep going. The last destination is like mountain and forest. They told us to go cut wood, build the house, whatever. And that's what we started up there.
Duncan: : Part four, children's Labor Camp.
In the countryside. Jeniffer was separated from her family and sent to a children's work camp.
Jeniffer: And then they start to separate us. A group of men go [00:16:00] with men, a group of women go to group of women. the 16, 17 older boy and girl. They all have a group too, so they separate them. So you live like that. And then I was young under 16, but I was very educated, so they almost put me with a group of adult to work.
I end up a group of children. from there on. I don't live with my parent .
Duncan: Jeniffer describes the work in the Khmer Rouge work camps, digging canals, carrying [00:16:30] dirt up the mountain and back all day. In the planting season, she was in the water every day, planting rice, pulling weeds. There was work to do year round. In the summer, she recalls fertilizing the soil with buffalo droppings.
She was severely malnourished and surrounded by death and disease.
And the next thing to know, this one died. This one never returned. This one died. This one never returned. . Until the Vietnamese took over. Only five of us left.
Jeniffer: My uncle that raised me, I think he die in the field because we [00:17:00] remember that he diabetic. And then my mother she died a year before the Vietnam. took over. I think 78.
Duncan: Part five, escaping the Khmer Rouge.
After the Vietnamese invasion against the Khmer Rouge in 1978, the Khmer Rouge were on the run. However, Jeniffer was unsure whether to trust the encroaching Vietnamese military or her Khmer Rouge captors. She stayed with the Khmer Rouge for a time before eventually escaping.
Phnom Penh was captured by the Vietnamese military in [00:17:30] 1979.
Jeniffer: And then when the Vietnamese came in, we run again. The Khmer Rouge told us that if we stay with the Vietnamese, we will kill . So we don't know. So we scared. We just stay with them. So I was with my aunt my mother's sister, my mother's sister-in-law.
And my other auntie and her son, just five of us left.
Oh my God. I ran again after the Vietnamese came because we just stay with the Khmer Rouge [00:18:00] until the end.
I run from one mountain to the next mountain, to the next mountain. We were stuck.so 1979, January 7th, independent from Khmer Rouge a lot of people already in the city. I stay in the mountain. Five month later, because they run between Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese, so they drop everything and no water and it's dark and you cannot see the sun or the light. Could you imagine? And then there are people, like [00:18:30] their parent there cannot bring them up. And then seven days and seven nights, the water up there, what the people drink, they cut the tree, or they go to the, wherever the hole, and drink the rain water
i'm surviving with all those stuff. Yeah. I don't know how the, that's why I say, you know, life is so precious, the fear and then what, how many man on that mountain? people give birth up there I don't know how, but, and then from [00:19:00] that mountain we cross to another jungle at the border of Cambodian and Thailand.
And then we had to hide in the canal, where the water running. And then we don't have any food. We only have salt. And the rice , we have to get the one that's not pounded, not become a rice yet. You have to pound it and then peel it, you know? And then one day I remember with my aunt we go to the well to get some water, to cook the rice .
And then they say, oh the bomb. And we [00:19:30] run, run again. So I drop everything and run, run and she hold on my hand and the next thing, the Khmer Rouge say we can go anywhere we want. That's where I decided to walk out. And then we walking out, one week from the mountain out to the village and get back to the province, the city.
Duncan: Jeniffer and her family members escaped from the forest, but decided not to move to Phnom Penh due to the danger of attack there from any remaining Khmer Rouge.
Jeniffer: So we need a ride. [00:20:00] But then they decided not to go to her hometown because right after that the Khmer Rouge, will look for you and do something again.
So they decided to go to another province, next to the border of Thailand. Maybe we can escape to that refugee camp. So we go to Kampong Thom And there a lot of the military buses and truck. So to get that ride, we have to give them some money So we end up in Kampong Thom, I like that province they have, [00:20:30] like city and little market and stuff.
And then there's a river so people get fish. And I lived there for while until my aunt She said she's gonna go to Phnom Penh first to looking for other relative who we can find.
I stay at home with my aunt, and we sell stuff in the market waiting for my mom come back from Phnom Penh if she Next she found her younger sister with my four sibling in Phnom [00:21:00] Penh,
She think they killed her husband already. ' at that time my older brother,he already gone.
First time he got Sent to the field. Yeah, he's a tough one too. I know that Khmer Rouge won't, leave him. Never know what happened to him, how he would kill or whatever.
Duncan: Jennifer recounts later learning the fate of her father and her younger brother.
Jeniffer: my father and my little brother, he was very sick and he told my little brother, keep going. [00:21:30] And he cannot make it anymore. So we don't know.
He pass away and then my brother with him or my brother go with another
Never know what happened
We don't know.
Some of Jeniffer's surviving family members were found by her aunt in Phnom Penh, and they made a plan to go to the refugee camps in Thailand. Jeniffer was informed that some of her other relatives had already made it to the Thai refugee camps, and that she should meet up with two boys who were family friends to help cross the border.
Duncan: From Phnom Penh she took a train to [00:22:00] Battambang, then a bus, then a bicycle with the two boys. The Thai Cambodian border was guarded by Thai authorities who were concerned about an influx of Cambodian refugees across the border.
Jeniffer: So I came through refugee camp by myself with two boy around my ages. One of them is my cousin's brother-in-law, and one of them his adopted son. He found him after Khmer Rouge and he don't have family, so he adopted him. he's like my cousin. so [00:22:30] I came with two of them.
on bicycle. They meet me at the Phnom Phen get on the train to Battambang. I only have a backpack of clothes. I don't even know what I get in there. Some money, nothing. Pretty much clothes. I wasn't sure what is my destination is
So we get to Svay Sisophon we stay with my cousin. the next thing we go to the camp, I was on the bicycle with him and across the [00:23:00] camp, the border.
Part six Thai refugee camps.
Duncan: Across the border in Thailand. She reached the refugee camps, finally settling into the Khao-I-Dong refugee camp, a sprawling settlement of over 100,000 people. what do you remember about when you first went into the camp?
Jeniffer: Oh, that was scary, huh? I mean, imagine I was in my adolescent 14, 15, maybe 16, and I only have like a couple pair of [00:23:30] clothes. We cannot bring anything. And I was sitting on the back on one of the bike of the boy. From there we go into the refugee camp in the Thailand Cambodian border.
It called Nong Chan that the first camp. the Thai Soldier, Vietnamese soldier, Cambodian. independent fReidom. So different political, at that border, and soldier military along the camp, and they're still fighting.
And then the people who [00:24:00] running in there, the people who escape like me, the people who do smuggling from Thailand into the camp, from the camp into Thailand to Cambodia, back and forth to sell. and then you have robbery and it's like a dangerous zone, They still fighting bombing.
Shooting. I go through that. And then every check station, if you pass, mean your life is safe. But in between there, you don't know. You'll be, be hit by the bullet or you got raped or you got [00:24:30] stop and then question and then interrogated, and then put you in the back, wherever, not let you go.
And then as a woman, as a young girl,
So a lot of women come through this. how can we protect from rape? It's such a nightmare. It's such a nightmare that I cannot sleep in peace or walking in peace anywhere.
look at all this violent that I went through. I could be raped, I could be paralyzed. One [00:25:00] shot of gun you know?
Jeniffer Reunites with family in the Khao-I-Dang refugee camp. She learned that her uncle who works as an engineer had agReid to sponsor her relocation as well as that of the rest of her family.
we end up in Khao-I-Dang. we have medicine, we have food, and then we have people supply us money from abroad
it's more dangerous when you get to the Thailand camp when in Khao-I-Dang
under the Thai, NGO the UN were there, but the doctor and [00:25:30] the foreigner that work They only in the daytime at night, they go back to Bangkok and the Thai soldier will take control over the camp. They can go into rape or to do anything.
people are sneaking in and sneaking out in the camp, and the Thai soldier shoot at them. And that's how they get paralyzed, broken leg, killed, you know, the next day on the, outside of the fence. You know, it is like a jail because a cottage and the wire fence around it, but they [00:26:00] patrol every corner of it.
So people get out to get the good from Thailand to bring it back into the camp to sell it. So like people still make a living and the people at the border are make a living and the refugee in the camp are surviving. Economically the Thai government get all this money from the UN and provide us this rotten fish and vegetable and unsanitary water.
I just started my menstrual like I am [00:26:30] 17 or 18 already because no food, We are just a refugee, surviving and waiting to go to other country. And then there's uncertainty that a lot of people don't have a sponsor.
I think it's very difficult. another privileges that have a sponsor, that have a family supplying money at the same time.
Duncan: When you got to the Thai camps, did you feel like the worst was over or was it still uncertainty?
Jeniffer: I don't really know, it is [00:27:00] the end yet, but I never feel safe. Never know the next day where, because from seeing other refugee, , when they call you to interview one by one for Immigration, , when your name was posted in the wall that say, this date, this date, this is US, this is Australia, this is France.
Something like that. You know, everybody saw their name, they celebrate and they excited After that they see INS. And after that they fail an interview some of [00:27:30] them either on suicide or, you know, disappointed. So it's uncertainty. You never know
jeniffer Recounts how family members were accepted by different countries for resettlement, some to Australia, some to France, and then some to the us.
She spent over a year in Khao-I-Dang refugee camp.
It's terrible in the camp and we all in there a year and a half or two, and then we had to split three country. One to go Australia, one to go France. The people go Australia, go first. my [00:28:00] sister and my uncle went to France,
Duncan: part seven, processing center in the Philippines,
Jeniffer: in 1982, Jeniffer's family was selected for U.S. resettlement. Before departure, they spent months at the Philippine Refugee Processing Center in Morong, Bataan in the Philippines, It served as one of the transit and processing centers for Southeast Asian refugees on their way to permanent resettlement abroad I was in the Philippine, I think it was less than a year, I don't know, eight months or seven months [00:28:30] or 10 months.
You know, study the cultural orientation and I feel like it is the safest. Last destination. I be in Philippine.
Duncan: In the camp on an island in Morong, Bataan. It's very nice and beautiful camp, I remember, I have a little good memory over there. jeniffer recalls volunteering to translate for one of the Filipino clinicians while in the camp, she felt a sense of pride being able to help, and she reflects on how this early volunteer [00:29:00] experience mirrored her later role as a cultural navigator at Harborview Medical Center.
Jeniffer: That's where I volunteered to do interpreting for one of theFilipino dentist.
Duncan: and you were translating between English.
Jeniffer: English to Cambodian. And at one point, he had, a couple of us, helping in a clinic So I was Cambodian and my other friend is Khmer Krom speak Vietnamese .
So at one time in the hospital there's a Vietnamese woman who was seeing a [00:29:30] doctor for gynecology, because they went through the boat and a lot of the women got raped
And she was having painful and they need somebody helping interpreting. so I was helping them and she interpret from Vietnamese to Cambodian, I interpret from Cambodian to English for them. Oh.
Duncan: Oh wow.
Jeniffer: So that is my first language skill that I will utilize it and helping other, I never forget it,
Duncan: And I was very proud of it. Yeah. [00:30:00] I think about it and how I end up in this healthcare, how end I doing this kind of job is my path Part eight. Arrival in Salem, Oregon, United States.
Jeniffer: So July 13th, 1983. From Manila to Tokyo. From Tokyo to Seattle, from Seattle to Portland, Oregon and Portland on a small plane to Salem, Oregon.
Duncan: Why Salem, [00:30:30] Oregon.
Jeniffer: my uncle live in Grants Pass. It's a small town and not much for refugee to do. So we have a co-sponsor, his friend live in Salem, Oregon.
they came to pick out at the airport, take us to the apartment, get us settled down in the apartment next to a community
And it's mid July is a, fruit picking season and it is time to picking berry. So the next two days, my cousin and I we end up on the [00:31:00] blueberry field.
So July 13 is a humid dry, and, then we had this Eskimo jacket that they gave us at the airport and like, okay, look like you from Alaska
And then I think a few there of the, we sat around in a little apartment with all of us and a little TV and a couple pot and pan and blanket and sheet for the bed, you know, and the next few days we end up picking berry,
Duncan: How was [00:31:30] that?
Jeniffer: I say, look, it's a paradise here in the blueberry field, in the midsummer July, so far from the mountain in Khao-I-Dang refugee camp. I'm like, it take me from one, direction to the next direction of my destiny. this is amazing, and then in the blueberry field, a lot of the Cambodian are picking berry and talking.
And it's just like, whoa. I am up in my own country again. Here we go. You [00:32:00] know? And eating rice together under the tree with all this, it's like a picnic. And it's just like, oh, that's how it is. That's how America is. Yeah.
So I came in July. September is start of high school I had to go to a newcomer ESL class for three months
So I was there with different refugee from different country, Mexican, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, whatever. Then after that next [00:32:30] semester, I was put in some regular high school class. And then some ESL class, science or chemistry or things like that.
Duncan: So this was your first time being back in school for a while.
Jeniffer: it is the first time back in school a formal education,
Duncan: Part nine, family and Community Work
Jeniffer: After high school I graduate. I move to Seattle. I meet my husband, I get married. November, [00:33:00] 1987, even before I start college. Yeah.
Duncan: you're already independent.
Jeniffer: I'm already independent. My mother cannot wait to marry me over. I barely speak English. And my husband, he came from Australia to meet his mother and his grandmother and then he just graduated from high school.
And then I had to become a US citizen in order to sponsor him to get him settled down. So that's how that thing happened. Yeah, and [00:33:30] then from there, November, 1987 we get married and I think this November will be what, thirty seven year.
Duncan: Jennifer started to work with refugee groups in the Seattle area as an interpreter between English and Khmer. However, her role expanded to include social work with issues regarding domestic violence and child protective services.
Jeniffer: I got the first full-time job, Refugee Women Alliance because of my language skill and I [00:34:00] able to speak both languages,I was helping the ESL teacher with a group of women, going to ESL class. But then also I have a title called domestic Violence. I don't really like the job because I don't know much about domestic violence and CPS and the law. I start the job without formal training. those, my experience first full-time job, social work. And at the end, I say [00:34:30] I maybe like this job, I maybe wanna come back to a healthcare field.
Duncan: Part 10 harborview Medical Center and Community House calls
Jeniffer eventually joined Harborview Medical Center's community house calls program, becoming one of its first cultural care mediators
Jeniffer: So I was interviewed by a community member. I interviewed by Dr. Jackson separately, and then with another Cambodian coordinator. the refugee clinic already did there. 1985. [00:35:00] I was there 1994.
I have a hard time. The first five year, honestly, during that time I looking for a job I was stressing out. I don't have a medical background. working on the doctor is very intimidating.
Not his high, not his physical, but his education and intellectual and I don't have any medical background and medical terminology is not, I interpret on a daily basis. I barely just spoke fluently English. I [00:35:30] just graduated from college, I have no background in the hospital. I want to be in the hospital. I want to become something, but I don't really know yet, you know? But that's my entrance to Harborview community house call. .
Duncan: Jeniffer Recounts the first patients she's working with who describe symptoms of depression and PTSD. These were terms and diagnoses with which she was not familiar. She also explains the lack of familiarity of patients and taking medications for chronic conditions.
Jeniffer: I [00:36:00] remember the first adult patient in refugee clinic. She's young. And then at that time it's a beginning of Prozac on depression. Like I have no idea. People came interpreting a lot of physical symptom
but it's seeing a lot of this PTSD because there's a new arrival on a new country living You can see all the shooting and all that stuff. So I learned to understand [00:36:30] that and then they got prescribed a lot of Prozac and then people say,
it's too drowsy and then I do home visit. Nobody take it. It is up there and the symptom doesn't go away. And people take a medicine for ongoing. I take only when I have a headache I can take it That's it. We don't have preventive care, we don't have this ongoing chronic diseaseYou can see how mixed up this medication is. We went home and all their cabinet is fill out their home [00:37:00] visit.
Duncan: Oh, so they were prescribed all these medications, not even taking them.
Jeniffer: They take it as needed, blood pressure, cholesterol.
Duncan: When you're seeing all these patients, could you relate to them? Could you understand where they're coming from? Uh.
Jeniffer: Um, at the beginning I don't, because I'm, I'm still working on my memories too. And five year later, I do a home visit with a social worker. And I learn a lot from them . And they say I have stress. So I told my [00:37:30] boss and then I see a psychology.
Duncan: So when you saw that psychologist, at that time, were you understanding what the patients were going through
Jeniffer: Yes. because he's seeing the same patient I see. But he's a psychologist. The clinical people don't know.
Duncan: So then you started to understand that the things that the community members that you saw that were suffering, you were going through the same thing.
Jeniffer: Going through the same thing and then I getting another secondary trauma from them [00:38:00] because I revisit their story
Duncan: Did you think of quitting?
Jeniffer: I did, but financially I cannot quit. I need health insurance for my children and my husband job is unstable. Company lay off, up and down. You know, this is the best job I can keep to have my medical coverages. I did think a lot of quit. I went out to talk to many colleges, like people I know I saw. I was so fortunate to have this outlet [00:38:30] outside.
They recommend me see a lot of counseling. That's why I see. the psychologist at Seattle U. Yeah. And it was amazing, right? My family don't know about it. My children never heard about it. The people I work with in the college, I don't think Dr. Graham, Dr. Jackson have ever heard this entire story either, you know?
But, they know, I frustrated when I go to, cry to them after I went through the job,
Duncan: Jennifer shares an experience [00:39:00] working with a Cambodian family as a caseworker cultural mediator at Harborview Medical Center. She discusses the emotional toll that the work carried, particularly because of the shared history of trauma with the patients she was caring for.
Jeniffer: I recall one family meeting for a young boy in a motorcycle accident in a coma for a month. When they call me to do a family meeting with the surgeon and the father and the brother I don't [00:39:30] know the family, because this are trauma, is not coming from refugee clinic that I build a relationship with.
in order to go in, normally I do the pre-visit pre-visit so I can know what I expecting because it's already intimidating. Sit on a table with a bunch of neurosurgeon and this extremely, medical language that I don't deal with, It is different, you know, I can mediate, I can lead that, but I want to know what is the situation I'm getting to? [00:40:00] Is it pulling the plug or explaining the condition of the status and they told me to explaining the status because it look like the family don't agree that he going to die.
I went in there the first session and the first introduction is emotional already, the father, I think the surgeon was trying to tell them that, they don't think he will survive, but they can keep and watch per request, but not too [00:40:30] long. And the father told him that he have a dream that his son will come back.
And then they start telling a story about coming across the border. the brother was speaking in English but I interpret for the father. And he say, my father brought all of us through refugee camp and we make it here. So I think my brother will make it. That is
And then later on, after interpret, they were in the same refugee [00:41:00] camp I am, At the same time I'm trying to, juggle all this thing accommodate and mediate facilitate this meeting, it's painful. And, and he's by almost the same age by my son.
That is very scary. You know, things could happen and it beyond my ability. and the mother wasn't there because they, think that their mother cannot take it. She's has so much PTSD already. you know, they don't think she can [00:41:30] take it.
So they explain to the surgeon and they say they think their brother will make it. . Those are I think this kind of things that I work, people don't understand it.
That's why I go to community education to give them a heads up. Things like this could happen and you could be prepared for it. And everybody saw my face and say, your job is easy walking up and down. I explain to them, you never know what in my head and what I'm sitting, with
You [00:42:00] know, I go down, I go learn, I go read the book, I go read the medical, you know, in my language. And then, and I try to figure and I try to understand how I can explain it accurately, you know, consistently. And you know, how my patients would understand in lay language, in normal language, because they come from different region, they speak different dialect, they live in different villages.
But our doctor in here, did they know it? They don't. Right. And that's how I feel this [00:42:30] is important to say, So that's how this job help me and then help my community and how I learning to process all these things.
thank you to all the colleague, , the peer support and my friend. Yeah.
Part 11, reflections and Legacy.
Duncan: For more than 30 years. Jennifer has helped patients from the Cambodian community navigate language and culture and has helped doctors at Harborview Medical Center provide more effective [00:43:00] care. She also discusses being confronted with her own history of trauma as she worked with patients who survived the Cambodian genocide.
Jeniffer: And that's what it is when working here thirty years with community housecalls, and spend a lot of time with every patient that I can provide continuity. And then I saw their illness is triggered by their trauma too, and every time they have a surgery or cancer, something going on big in their life crisis, then the [00:43:30] trauma come.
I did inform the provider that too, you know, that is, the PTSD doesn't go away 30 years ago when I start here, I just brand new. I have no education background in social study or any science, But then learning to see those symptom and those story and be able to recognize.
Why I triggered by this trauma, why I get moody, why I frustrated, why I got agitated, why I [00:44:00] got, startled, And it did occur through my whole life, you know, raising family. I never have a good model, how I parent my child, how I raise my children, you know, all this stuff is all in the back of my head and how I do it, and then watching my patient doing it with their children at the same time.
So now when I, looking back how my trauma is triggered from all of these thing, you know, I mean, when I was busy raising kid [00:44:30] and doing all the thing, I don't have time to go back there. But now, like my children are grown up and I had some more time and a lot of these memories starting to flooding everywhere and I thought, well, you know, either go back or not go back.
I try to forget at one point, but it won't go anywhere, either put it in a book or in another place or say it, I, and get it out my system, you know? So it's like, okay, it's maybe about time [00:45:00] to do that. And people never know how I survive with all of this. You know, even in my own family, you know, I don't discuss this a lot with my husband either, because his journey with the Khmer Rouge was treated differently than I were treated, because every province in Cambodia, depend on what region, where you live.
From Phnom Penh to Seattle, Jeniffer Huang has carried her history into every act of care, turning personal loss into community healing.
I was [00:45:30] raised like a Cambodian woman and here I with a two boy and I'm not knowing anything and I never raised with a brother or a sibling. It's a lot Looking back, I mean, how I'm holding myself, with what I go through I mean, raised without nurturing, you know, and affection, motherhood, what is mother like, you know, those kind of thing.
And you know, I don't really have a childhood. and here in the journey where all [00:46:00] this scary thing that could happen to me, those are, amazing. And when I look back, I have done so much already, you know, that I never thought of. I think I do the best already. I have to give myself credit.
I mean, looking back I was grateful. I was blessed, I was thankful And I learned through my job, my career, the people around me, you know, the colleague, the team, that I have in connection with, it, it's amazing.
I mean [00:46:30] like they take a village to raise the people and I still need that and I still want that.
Now I, think I feel more confident that I was able to say what I want, what I know, how I know, you know. To tell people how much I know
Duncan: Thank you so much for joining us today, Jennifer.
Jeniffer: Oh, you are welcome. And thank you for doing this.
Duncan: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Provider Pulse series on the EthnoMed [00:47:00] podcast. Our deepest thanks to Jennifer Huang for the courage and generosity it took to revisit her story.
Hearing her journey helps us better understand the immense hardship and resilience of the Cambodian people, many of whom are our colleagues, patients, and friends.
As one of the founding members of the community House calls program, Jennifer used her own life experience to help Cambodian immigrants navigate the healthcare system with compassion and cultural insight. Her story reminds us that every [00:47:30] immigrant patient carries a complex history, and that as providers, our care is strengthened when we take the time to understand the historical, cultural, and personal layers that shape each person's story.
We look forward to joining you on our next episode of the EthnoMed Podcast.