CANA Global CONNECT Vol. 2, Issue 1 – Chief Editor’s Note

Immigrant Health Matters

Dear CANA members and friends,

I first want to wish all of our dear members and their families a Happy New Year! 2017 was a wonderful year for CANA, from the creation of our newsletter CANA Global CONNECT, to our growing involvement in the community through more volunteer opportunities for CANA members. Furthermore, 2017 marked the seventh CANA Scholarship to two very deserving nursing school graduates, Susan Lee and Xiaolu Li-Herrera! I hope that 2018 continues to bring great success and growth to CANA as an organization and our members’ own endeavors!

In the first issue of CANA Global CONNECT’s second volume, we highlight Dr. Emerson Ea’s work on developing a heart health education model for Filipino immigrants in the United States. This research is an important example of an essential tenet among nurses and other health care providers: cultural appropriate care for patients to promote better health outcomes. Dr. Ea’s work focuses on Filipino immigrants in the United States, who show disproportionately high rates of hypertension. Several studies have attributed this poor health outcome to general challenges that many immigrant groups face: the dearth of culturally appropriate health care accommodations, such as lack of knowledge about the medical system, language barriers, and lack of available screening and educational materials that cater to the immigrant group’s cultural interests. Dr. Ea’s work is a great example of how health care providers can develop more culturally appropriate strategies to promote patients’ adherence to healthy behaviors and self-care and ultimately to improve patient-centered outcomes. As we are all nurses in the United States, interacting with patients of many different backgrounds every day, it is important to develop cultural competency to improve immigrant health. I hope that you all find Dr. Ea’s article to be helpful and interesting!

This issue of CANA Global CONNECT is also celebrating the recipients of the seventh CANA Scholarship, Susan Lee and Xiaolu Li-Herrera from the Hunter Bellevue School of Nursing. The CANA Scholarship was established in 2011 to encourage the next generation of Chinese American nurses. In this issue, we feature the two recipients of the 2017 CANA Scholarship on their career paths and why they chose nursing. I hope that you will find their stories inspiring and encouraging. It is a privilege for CANA to be able to provide these young nurses encouragement in their careers, and we encourage CANA members and friends to consider making donations to support the 2018 CANA Scholarship so we can continue this wonderful tradition!

Thank you all again for your continued support for CANA Global CONNECT! We are looking forward to a wonderful year of CANA activities, and hope that this newsletter will continue to encourage the growth of the Chinese American Nurses’ community through communication of knowledge, insights, and support.

Wishing you all the best,

Mei R. Fu, PhD, RN, FAAN

Chief Editor