This year’s Ethnic Physician Leadership Award, given by the California Medical Association Foundation and the Network of Ethnic Physician Organization, went to San Francisco Commissioner Dr. Edward Chow, a prominent leader in the Bay Area and Chinese American communities.
The award honors an ethnic physician for outstanding leadership contributions to ethnic communities in the field of health and medicine. Chow, who has been serving the community for more than 30 years, has covered issues ranging from access to health services and hepatitis B screenings, to pushing for greater culturally and linguistically sensitive care for Asian Americans in the Bay Area.
A native of San Francisco, Chow received his undergraduate degree at the University of San Francisco and then went on to medical school at St. Louis University.
“Frankly, [going to St. Louis] was to get away from the distractions of the City,” Chow explained with a chuckle. “But I always wanted to come back and practice in the City.”
Growing up, his exposure to the Chinese American community—and the Asian American community in general—always reminded him of the great need to raise awareness of health issues in order to reach greater parity. Chow recalls the establishment of the Chinese Hospital in 1925 that enabled recent Asian immigrants to access health services when no one else would accept the Chinese for hospitalization.
While services have expanded greatly since the early 1900s, he continues to emphasize the need for raising greater awareness and connecting people to the health care system.
Among his many leadership positions, Chow is currently executive director of the Chinese Community Health Care Association, a nonprofit medical group providing culturally competent medical services to the San Francisco Chinese community. Chow also played a major role in cancer awareness and research as the regional principal investigator of S.F. Chinese through the Asian American Network for Cancer Awareness, Research and Training, where his focus is colorectal cancer. Additionally, he has been heavily involved in hepatitis B prevention and treatment programs.
“Prior to the City coming in with the hepatitis B free program, we were already raising the issue of hepatitis B [in the Chinese community],” Chow said. “We all recall that hepatitis B identification was a key issue. The project was initially a National Cancer Institute project to begin the education of what our ethnic physicians could do to identify those with hepatitis B. Prior to treatments becoming available in 2000, it was a social stigma to have hepatitis B.”
With untreated hepatitis B, people can develop liver failure and even cancer. When treatments became available, there was a great push within the Asian American community to raise awareness of the issue through a series of education programs and in partnership with communities, such as the NICOS Chinese Health Coalition.
“Here, we finally had a chance to treat. We were very pleased to see a full-blown media outreach campaign,” Chow said. “Within our own medical group, we could raise awareness of hepatitis B.”
While Asian Americans have been receiving greater attention, there is still a lot to be done, according to Chow. For one, he points to the model minority myth that masks the needs of recent immigrant communities.
“When you combine all Asians, it doesn’t ever look like we need any help—economically, educationally or anything,” he said. “Bu, one of the messages in our community is that you can’t aggregate all these measures. We have had the opportunity to have many generations here—many assimilated—but we also have a lot of newcomers. We have many important needs, as do other groups, but you don’t see our unique needs through aggregate data.”
Chow continues to stress culturally and linguistically appropriate care for Asian Americans in San Francisco as a way to remove disparities. He attributes his success in already raising important issues in the community to the community itself.
“The City cares so much about health, and it makes it possible to do this work,” Chow said. “All of this just can’t be done unless there really is a caring community that will raise the issues of health and do something about it.”
Some of the Current Hats of Ed Chow
- Medical Director, Chinese Community Health Plan
The health care plan delivers culturally sensitive, bilingual managed care to the San Francisco community.
- Executive Director, Chinese Community Health Care Association
The physician’s practice association serves the people of San Francisco, with 78 primary care physicians and more than 150 specialists.
- Commissioner, San Francisco Health Commission
With the new San Francisco Health Plan in its early phases, outreach is one of the most important components in reaching the low-income communities, especially those in Chinatown, according to Chow.
- Chairman, Asian Pacific American Diabetes Association Council
Chow advocates for culturally tailored programs that reach out to Asian communities, especially in the area of diabetes, which is twice as prevalent in the Asian population as it is in Caucasian populations.
