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. 22: Crossing to Privilege - What Global Health Taught Tra Tran About Power
Raised by Vietnamese parents who survived war, Tra Tran grew up believing that everything would be okay—but learning what that really means took her from New Mexico to the global stage and back again. She shares how generational resilience, privilege, and honesty shaped her work in refugee advocacy and self-discovery.
In this conversation, she reflects on privilege, burnout, and rediscovering meaning through community-based advocacy with refugees in North Carolina through the Refugee Community Partnership.
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250629 Tra Tran
[00:00:00]
Opening Quote
Tra: My parents, live in the everything is going to be okay world because they were born and raised in the war, and they have already experienced so much fear and unsafety. sometimes it feels like, what I'm experiencing is really hard, but when I compare it to what they experience, it's really not that bad.
And it, kind of makes you think oh, I just need to get over it rather than emotionally deal with it.
Duncan: Welcome to the [00:00:30] Provider Pulse series of the EthnoMed podcast, where we highlight the career paths of diverse healthcare professionals. That is Tra Tran, a Vietnamese American language access advocate, whose work in refugee health began as a search for belonging from New Mexico to Duke University.
From Jordan to Geneva, Tra has spent her career exploring how systems recognize or ignore the lived experiences of migrants and refugees.
Section 1 -- Roots and Resilience
Duncan: Tra's story in the US begins in Las Cruces, New Mexico. A desert town near the Mexico [00:01:00] border, far from the coast where most Vietnamese families settled. Her parents left post-war Vietnam and brought with them a stoic faith that everything would be okay.
Tra: My name is Tra Tran. I am a Vietnamese immigrant. I came to the US when I was two and a half with my, parents and my sister. And we came here because my dad was doing a PhD in El Paso, Texas. And we ended up in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Duncan: Her father pursued [00:01:30] an academic career in computer science while her mother trained as an accountant.
I have always. lived in predominantly not white spaces. Las Cruces is a city with , a lot of, Latin people, many of whom are undocumented. Even though there weren't that many Asian people, I never really experienced as much of the classic American racism that a lot of my, family and friends who live in different places [00:02:00] experienced. But I still saw it in who was in advanced classes and who was given different opportunities and who was seen as automatically quote unquote trouble. even as a child, Tra noticed that inequity was not always overt, but could be subtle in who received opportunity.
Race was definitely something I was aware of, but that was because I was Asian in a non-Asian place there was a lot of ignorance around Asian people, but it wasn't like hatredAnd to be [00:02:30] quite frank, I did use it to my advantage because everyone automatically assumed I was really smart and that I would never get in trouble. I would get in trouble all the time and they would never put me into trouble like I should have probably been. Her parents immigrated from northern Vietnam and provided pressure to excel, but this was not constrained to a specific path.
Tra: My parents came from north Vietnam and they came here through an education visa and then we went through the normal naturalization [00:03:00] process. They are from two different cities. My mom is from Haiphong, which is a, coastal industrial city, and my father is from Nam Dinh. And I think my parents are very, atypical because they didn't push me or my sister to be a doctor or an engineer or a lawyer. Yes. My mom told me I would be a good lawyer because I like to argue as a child. Um, but it was never like, these are your only options For them it was, I don't care what you do, [00:03:30] as long as you're one of the best at it.
So excellence was the pressure. It wasn't necessarily a career path. And I internalized that as like excellence means the highest degree. It means getting that PhD, becoming tenure track, becoming X, Y, Z.
Duncan: Her sister took advantage of the freedom afforded by her parents and experimented with a different career path.
Tra: My sister is amazing, and she actually was a Michelin [00:04:00] star pastry chef, for her first career. And she was gonna open a bakery, but then realized because of the COVID pandemic that it wasn't a life that gave her a chance to live. And so she went back to school and just finished her master's in computer science.
Duncan: Recently Tra returned to Vietnam to record life story interviews with her grandparents, a project that deepened her understanding of her family's past
Tra: I did, life story interviews with my grandparents. Which was amazing. And I [00:04:30] highly recommend everyone do this because. You get a much better sense of who they are outside of their kids, which are your parents, and also, you really understand where your parents are coming from and like why they might be the way they are.
Duncan: My parents, live in the everything is going to be okay world because they were born and raised in the war, and they have already experienced so [00:05:00] much fear and unsafety that what we are dealing with right now in the US is like not that bad. And I think sometimes that perspective can be really difficult to grapple with as there child because sometimes it feels like, what I'm experiencing is really hard, but when I compare it to what they experience, it's really not that bad.
Tra: And it, kind of makes you think oh, I just need to get over it rather than emotionally deal with it. And recently, my parents, I love 'em. They've been getting a [00:05:30] lot better around understanding that just because it's not as bad as war, it's still bad. And having those conversations, which are difficult with me and my sister about the things that we're struggling with.
Section 2 -- Crossing to Privilege
Duncan: After years in small border towns, Tra entered an entirely different world, Duke University, where privilege was the air everyone breathed. What had felt normal in New Mexico now seemed invisible against wealth and whiteness
Tra: I went to a elite private. Educational Institute, in North Carolina, [00:06:00] Duke. And I was just overwhelmed and shocked by the realities of this PWI.
I have never experienced that reality of wealth that was considered normal there I was confused by how all of these people who were my age were so much farther ahead than me, just by the realities of what educational systems they were coming from,
Duncan: Coming from underfunded public schools Tra found [00:06:30] herself surrounded by classmates who had attended private academies and traveled across the world
Tra: I found my people who were also in similar boats as me coming from public education systems that are underfunded, never really having to work hard and then all of a sudden having to read like 600 pages a week per class was overwhelming. And I think I made the best of the situation by grabbing as many experiences as I could, and that is [00:07:00] what led me to doing refugee health research.
Duncan: at Duke, identity collided with aspiration.
Tra: I've never been around that many white people, or Asian people in school. I was like, holy crap. Yeah, everything was different. The politeness, passive aggressiveness, the, non-religious, but very regimented personalities. And before I really found my people, I kind of was like bored. You know, like a lot of people had experiences money could [00:07:30] buy, but they didn't have experiences that made them interesting, if that makes sense. I met someone who had been to all seven continents, and all she could say about her trip to Antarctica was, oh yeah, it was cool. And I was like, that's all you've got.
I have very little social anxiety and also because I like didn't understand the social rules of wealth, I would just sit next to someone, introduce myself and then be like, you wanna be friends for this class? 'cause like, we should share notes.
Duncan: Her blunt warmth broke through the elite discomfort. She [00:08:00] turned outsider status into social fluency.
Tra: I think it just immediately made people kind of like wanna be my friend, because all of these people had so much social anxiety and they're so afraid of saying the wrong thing and doing the wrong thing, and like being perceived in a wrong way. And I was like, I'm used to being perceived incorrectly, so that doesn't matter to me.
So it was fascinating because sometimes people would be like, oh my God, I can't believe you just said that. And I was like, said, what? I don't know what you're talking about. I was like, it worked out, didn't it? And then moved [00:08:30] on.
I think it was also crazy how many people had access to hardcore stuff, but that it was prescribed to them and how freely people would share it but only within their little social circles. And it was also crazy how, immature people were like, I taught people how to do their own laundry for the first time. I explained to someone that you really should scrub stains out And I was like, this is beyond what I was expecting, honestly.
Duncan: Moments like [00:09:00] that made her realize that privilege was not only about money, but it was also about insulation from ordinary life.
Tra was first drawn to the field of psychology, but then she discovered cultural anthropology.she found language for what she had lived through studying power, perspective, and empathy.
Tra: I found cultural anthropology, and I was like, I love this stuff because the point of cultural anthropology is to make the strange feel normal and make normal feel strange, and really try to interrogate [00:09:30] cultural and societal assumptions. And I just love that 'cause I was like, ugh. Yes, we're all weird. That's right.
I've always wanted to understand why someone is the way they are. And I think that's what I thought psychology would teach me. But psychology is a field that is shaped by the western white male wealthy perspective. And cultural anthropology, which has a horrific history of colonization and, horrible stuff, [00:10:00] does a good job of acknowledging that history and trying to what doctors would say you know, do no harm. Be aware of your own perspective identities and subjectivities in how you are perceiving things and it made me much more understanding of other peoples.
Duncan: Anthropology allowed her to venture outside the classroom. She wanted to see how culture and displacement looked on the ground, so she joined a global program that sends students into refugee communities abroad.
Tra: I did this really awesome [00:10:30] program that allowed me to do a month of intensive coursework on refugee and migration studies, a month in Jordan as a field researcher collecting life stories with Iraqi and Syrian refugees. This was 2014, so the Syrian civil War had really just transitioned from conflict to war and, the Iraqi refugee situation had transitioned from crisis to protracted displacement.
Then I went to India in the summer doing research [00:11:00] on orphaned and vulnerable children living in residential style care homes, and looking at their health outcomes and psychosocial outcomes. And I was like, this is where I really started to understand that research and global health is, reasonable pathway for a career.
Duncan: In two continents that summer Tra learned that research could illuminate injustice. She continued these trips as a research assistant.
Tra: I loved Jordan. I still love Jordan. I think about it all of the time. After I graduated [00:11:30] undergrad, I actually then took students on the same trips that I went to. I would say I took five trips.
Duncan: Those travels introduced her to a mentor who would reshape how she thought about privilege and responsibility.
Tra: My mentor, she was the director of the institute. She actually was one of the, Northern Irish refugees brought over during the Northern Ireland, Ireland, clashes. Even though she's like a, white lady, she was great. She's also really funny and we both have the same sense of [00:12:00] humor, and I think we similarly had parents who were just like, honestly, get over it. we had the same approach with the students where we were like, you guys need to figure out how to play nice with each other.
'cause you're here for a month. I'm not your mom, I'm not going to step in. But if it starts affecting the work, I will. yeah.
Duncan: After several years working as a research assistant abroad, she entered a master's program in global health with a plan of remaining in academia.
Tra: I've always been interested in global health. especially global health as research, which is what this program really focused [00:12:30] on. And I did get a scholarship. I, got into this really awesome program that allowed me to be in Geneva to work at the South Center, which is, a multinational, multilateral, organization that supports the global south.
And working there in policy around access to medicines specifically with TB and International Patent Law. The compact on global refugees was being evaluated by [00:13:00] nation states and they were going through their rounds of consultation.
So I sat in on a few of those. it was just so much fun and I had so much joy and passion in this work. And I think there's something about Geneva that you kind of feel like, everything's gonna be okay. Like, we're gonna make head roads on this.
Duncan: However it was on the plane, when she reflected on the contrast between the distant well-funded work in Geneva and her prior work directly with displaced people,
Tra: But it wasn't until I got on the plane to [00:13:30] come back to the US that I was sitting there.
And then I read through some of the interviewsthat I had done with refugees in Jordan and in all these places, and I was just like, it is so crazy how much money gets spent at these International World Health Association, international Global Compact on refugee consultations.
And then it never trickles down to the people that they say they are supporting and one of my really good friends there [00:14:00] was just like, yeah, it's fascinating, right? Because here on the international stage, we're the underdog as the global south, and we're the ones who are fighting for our countries and our priorities to be recognized.
But when you go from the global stage to the national stage, now we're the top dog. And we're the people who are the ones who are oppressing others and creating policies that are citizenship based and all this stuff. The scales of oppression and the [00:14:30] scales of power are not one-to-one, it's exponential, And I was like, wow, this is like crazy. but it was a really good experience for me to have because now I have experienced policy creation, implementation, and evaluation on all levels, and I can see how it's just not enough.
Section 4--Rwanda, conversation with mentor
Duncan: After finishing her master's in Global Health Tra was ready for one more field posting in Rwanda to set up a research site. There, she realized she did [00:15:00] not have a long-term plan, and she confronted her own place in the global health hierarchy.
Tra: That's when I went to Rwanda and my mentor sat me down one day and was just like, what do you wanna do with your life? Like whatever it is, I know you can accomplish it. But you need to know or you need to make some decisions that go beyond just the day. And I had a really hard time with that because I was like, well, I have no idea. I have just been going with the flow and like going based off of my immediate interests, and I never had that [00:15:30] 5 year, 10 year, 15 year plan in my head outside of like, oh, I'll just get a PhD and then I'll become a professor because that's what I know. But once I got into the world I was like, oh, there's so much more you can do. And there's so many jobs that exist outside of professional degrees
Sometimes I wish I could have just like done a trade program and become a carpenter. 'cause I think I would've been really good at that or become an electrician or a mechanic. Because I love solving problems and immediately start [00:16:00] making money and doing a job that frankly, everyone always needs versus my precarious passion of refugee health.
I was setting up a field site, and it was amazing. I had a great time. But I think also like. the privilege of being considered an expat versus an immigrant is very prevalent across the global south.
Duncan: she realized that holding a US passport was not simply a tool for travel.
It was a form of power that changed how people saw her and how she saw herself.
Tra: I was an expat, I [00:16:30] had this privilege of being an American citizen of coming from the global north of coming for something as weird as research, you know? it's so interesting 'cause like. You as an individual wanna enjoy what you do, but then like you have to be honest with yourself about the privileges that you have to be able to even do these things.
Section 5 -- Pandemic Clarity: COVID stripped away the glamour of global health work, forcing Tra to confront privilege, burnout, and a re-evaluation of what meaningful service means.
Duncan: In 2019, Tra was still leading student field work in Rwanda. When her mentor asked her that unsettled question, what's next for you? She didn't have an answer. Then within months, the world had shut down.
Tra: [00:17:00] Yeah, I was like, I don't know. I take a long time to ruminate, like what I really want and think and feel will take me days to weeks, to months to know, unless something like a global pandemic happens, and then the shininess of this work gets stripped away, and I'm left to think about like, what about that work really invigorated me?
So 2019 was when we had that conversation in the summer, and then COVID was [00:17:30] like in our face, and COVID took away all of the things I love about that job. I couldn't travel, I couldn't work with the refugee communities in Durham.
All of these students were super depressed, but they were like, honestly whining from their, penthouse apartment in New York, or, vacation home in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And I'm like out here literally driving around Durham, picking up food boxes to [00:18:00] deliver to our families because they can't work.
They don't have a car, they don't have anywhere to get food.
Duncan: Tra found the contrast. Unbearable. Elite students complaining about loneliness while her refugee neighbors faced hunger,
Tra: a part of my job at that time was refugee research, I led and built up this research project on domestic minor sex trafficking across the us. So then I was like, oh my God, this is brutal.
Because now I'm hearing all this horrible stuff about sex trafficking [00:18:30] of youth and like all the different problems that exist for so many different communities. And then these undergrads are just so privileged and like not doing anything about it. And I was just like, I hate all of you and I think I hate this job.
Duncan: The vicarious trauma from her sex trafficking research was layered on top of pandemic exhaustion.
Tra: I don't have any release, from all this stress and like my own personal sadness. I was like, this is supposed to be the best and the brightest of this [00:19:00] country, and like all you can think about is yourself, which I understand is like a very 20-year-old way of thinking. And also like, I don't know, it was like my parents, I was like, get over it and go out and do something about it.
I was like, I think I need to actually get out of this job and go back to the things that I loved about this work. But not suffer to do it.
Duncan: The pause provided by the pandemic, gave her space to see what actually mattered to her.
Tra: What about this work really gave me passion and [00:19:30] it was working with people who have lived experience and who hold the knowledge that go beyond what is written and published in a peer review journal. And that's kind of what led me to working at, RCP now.
Section 6--From Research to Advocacy: Show how Tra converts insight into action, moving from theory and institutions toward local advocacy and participatory reseasrch. The tone should feel calmer, resolved, and rooted in community trust.
Duncan: Tra carried that realization back home to North Carolina. After years of working in policy and global programs, she wanted to return to the level where change actually touches people
Tra: I worked at a startup for a year, which was fascinating because startup world is very different, [00:20:00] than regular business and research, although it has a lot of research aspects. And then I worked at the North Carolina State Refugee Office, which is housed in the Department of Health and Human Services, I quickly realized I am not made to be a part of the bureaucracy.
Duncan: Leaving state systems behind. She looked for work that aligned with her community based values.
She found this work at the Refugee Community Partnership in North Carolina.
Tra: So now I am a research and institutional advocacy manager for [00:20:30] a grassroots community-based organization that works with refugees and migrants of, all backgrounds in North Carolina. So it's a mix of language access data and also stories of people who have experienced, unfortunately, really terrible things due to the inefficiencies of the American healthcare system. We collect surveys after people accompany members to appointments then we also do [00:21:00] interpreted interviews. So I'm in the room, I'm asking questions, it's being interpreted to a community member, they respond in their language. And then we also do community health forums, which are done in people's primary languages. All of this is recorded, it is transcribed, and then translated back into data.
Duncan: Instead of studying refugees from afar, Tra now collaborates with them building trust through stories told in their own languages.
Tra: Our organization was initially started as mutual aid. [00:21:30] So, it is relationships, it is true community, it is not having to find people to interview. It's asking our community members who would like to be interviewed and people volunteering because they trust us and they trust that everything they say will be given to the right people to make systemic change.
Duncan: In RCPs offices, and living room meetings. Tra rediscovered the purpose she had been pursuing across continents: community as expertise. Her [00:22:00] journey from researcher to advocate completes a circle.
She offered the following advice to students.
Tra: I would tell them that
if you think you wanna be something, you should always shadow or, intern. In the food industry, it's called staging, like. Try it out. Not knowing what you like is a huge, benefit to finding out what you do like. I would also say like, you're not gonna love every part of your job and that's [00:22:30] normal.
You can have fun and enjoy your life, and also at the same time, recognize the privileges that you have in being able to do so.
Duncan: Thank you so much for your time. I think you took us on a really interesting journey, but what I hope is that a lot of students can at least see elements of themselves in your journey and that can help them. So thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
You've been listening to the Provider Pulse series [00:23:00] from the EthnoMed Podcast at Harborview Medical Center. Our thanks to Tra Tran for sharing her story, A journey from New Mexico, to refugee field work across the world, and finally to North Carolina. Her reflections remind us that success isn't about titles or travel. It's about honesty, humility, and connection. Real expertise lives in community. To hear more conversations that explore the intersections of culture, care and belonging, follow the EthnoMed podcast wherever you listen or visit [00:23:30] ethnomed.org for additional resources.
Thank you and see you at our next episode.