- Dr. Ricky Choi welcomes your health-related questions.
Health is such a vitally important issue for everyone, and, for our ethnic community, with roughly 30 percent lacking health insurance, it is one to which we often do not pay enough attention. In an effort to encourage a pro-active approach to our health and well-being, KoreAm will be running an occasional health column written by Dr. Ricky Choi, a pediatrician at Asian Health Services, a community health center in Northern California that serves as a national model for the care of Asian American immigrant communities. In his practice, Dr. Choi often sees how health and culture are intimately connected. He also witnesses disturbing disparities in the Korean American community, such as the high rates of hepatitis B, low rates of preventive care such as mammograms and pap smears,and the growing problem of obesity among Asian American youth.
This month, Dr. Choi welcomes your questions on a range of health-related issues, whether it be on the legitimacy of your mom’s “cure” for the common cold, how health care reform affects you, or perhaps your reservations about vaccinating your children. Please email your questions to Dr. Choi at dr.ricky@charactermedia.com, along with a first name and your city and state of residence (pseudonyms are OK if you’d like to remain anonymous). Questions and answers will be posted online and also published in an upcoming issue of KoreAm.
