health – ACAM 320B student submissions

June 20, 2023June 20, 2023

量太麻烦了 – It’s too much trouble to measure ingredients

The same dish, a slightly different taste every time, but always with the same love, care, and intent on healing

Creator:
Sorella Zhang 张筱媚 (she/her)

Medicine isn’t just about curing diseases and ailments – it can also be able preventing diseases and ailments, and maintaining good health. This kind of perspective about health is characteristic of a various traditional systems of medicine, whether it’s traditional Mongolia, Iranian, Indigenous, or Chinese medicine, amongst others. By seeing medicine as preventative rather than reactive, this allows edible items with medicinal properties to be incorporated into food that can nourish and heal people on a continuous basis. Sorella presents a cookbook filled with recipes involving ingredients that are known to have various medicinal properties in Traditional Chinese Medicine; but it also is filled with a lot of love. The central them is certainly food; but one can see/feel/sense the love and intimate connections that emanate from these recipes. How can we all incorporate traditional medicinal ingredients into our food in a responsible manner?

Click on the following to reveal (first) the cookbook, and (second) the creator’s notes (Note: PDF viewer not compatible with some mobile platforms; but it is available for download or to view via mobile PDF viewers)

June 20, 2023June 20, 2023

When What’s Available Isn’t Enough

This population of millions in Canada needs immediate attention with culturally-adept solutions to improve their mental health

Creator:
Harleen Kaur Hundal

The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated families around the world; but such effects have disproportionately hit certain populations more than others. Internationally, this in differences can be seen in infection/hospitalization/fatality rates across the world. Nationally, this disparity across various social lines, most prominently based on ethnicity. As COVID-19 swept across Canada, each province and territory had to figure out how to best manage this virus, often shutting down who sectors of economic activity while relying on those performing essential services to keep the world running. Unfortunately, zooming into Greater Vancouver, many essential services are visibly and disproportionately reliant on racialized folks, whether this include grocery store workers, truckers, healthcare providers, laundry service providers, meat works, or many others. This places racialized folks at a much greater risk of becoming infected with, or dying from, COVID-19 – including South Asian diaspora. Read Harleen’s impassioned letter to her Member of Parliament, Hon. Carla Qualtrough, as she dissects the racialized impact of the pandemic, and what needs to be done to help the South Asian diasporic community. So what can be done beyond the generic colour-blind health interventions that are already available?

Click on the following to reveal the paper (Note: PDF viewer not compatible with some mobile platforms; but it is available for download or to view via mobile PDF viewers)

April 30, 2022July 11, 2022

Intersectionality Matters!

Both Asian Canadians and LGBTQ+ Canadians are facing increasing rates of discrimination and violence

Author:
Tsuba Shima (she/her)

Health is a huge issue when it comes to the Asian diaspora for numerous reasons – cultural barriers, traditional systems of medicine, discrimination, and other factors all play an important role. The discussion that needs to take place with greater prominence is understanding how racialization, gender, and sexual orientation all intersect with each other to better explain and account for variability in health. Tsuba conducts a comprehensive review to examine whether or not such intersectionality matters when examining health disparities. In particular, do conventional health trends regarding racialized settlers in Canada replicate for racialized LGBTQ+ folks, and what implications does this have for future research involving this topic?

Click on the following to reveal the paper (Note: PDF viewer not compatible with some mobile platforms; but it is available for download or to view via mobile PDF viewers)