YouSaid · the spoken record

Leana Wen

lines on the record: 58
first: 2021-08-26
most recent: 2021-08-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Thank you, David. I am proud to know you too and to work with you as part of CNN. And thank you for your leadership and for everything that you have done in service to our country and to our people.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Me. I mean, I realized that I am in some ways kind of the face of some of this targeted anger. But there are so many elderly Asian Americans who, even though they are now vaccinated and now can get out and about, are afraid to go to the grocery store because they're afraid of being attacked and assaulted. I mean, that's the real problem here.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That are not just disagreeing with me, but directly attribute, for example, people who look like me as the reason why we have coronavirus or that accused me of being an agent for the Chinese Communist Party, which is kind of ridiculous, especially with this background that you now know, David, about my about us leaving China on political asylum. But okay, so I actually didn't really think of myself as being Chinese American until the pandemic. I mean, I knew that I was Chinese American. I don't mean that I denied my identity, but rather that I thought of myself as a physician, as a mom, as a public health person. I mean, I didn't consciously think of myself as being Chinese American until so many others identified me as such in this context. And I've actually gotten since more involved with groups that are trying to stop API hate, trying to raise awareness of this issue because this is not about.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know, I think that there is some strange combination of things that somehow draws the wrath of a certain segment of the American public. It's talking about vaccines, being a woman, being a Chinese American, and then there are some people who connect me to my work before with Planned Parenthood. Somehow that is a very toxic brew that ends up with, I mean, I will tell you, If I'm on the radio or writing a piece for the post, I don't really get backlash. I mean, maybe once in a while I might get people who are disagreeing with me. That's fine. I want to have an honest policy discussion or conversation about issues. That's fine. But it's when I'm on TV. And I think there's something about how I look as a woman and as a Chinese American that draws out some extremely upsetting remarks.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Remediation or senior or services for seniors on preventing falls or providing glasses for children. I mean, things that are not controversial, I think we really need to take that approach to try to take public health out of this partisan political sphere, or else we're going to have many worse downstream consequences after COVID.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what I really worry about is what's going to happen next time. As then we've seen a number of state legislatures actually pass laws already that are In the middle of political, ideological culture wars, and it's now seen as some kind of partisan issue. And I really worry about what's going to happen in the future. And actually, my advice, and again, maybe nobody's asking me for this, but if there were local health officials primarily in Republican areas that are asking me for advice on what they should be doing around COVID to try to depoliticize, my advice would be stop talking about COVID. For many people, this is not the way that it should be, right? But for many people, COVID has become so politicized, even talking about vaccines or talking about masking. Half the people in some areas or more are going to tune you out and not trust you because of that. I think that public health officials really need to start talking about other things that they're doing for the public that are not at all COVID related, things like lead.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, trust me that I am wise I am. You know, you put your luggage through a metal detector because we don't trust people on issues like this. We shouldn't for vaccine status either.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who are not yet eligible to be vaccinated? You don't have the right to give them a potentially deadly disease. And I think we need to start talking about staying unvaccinated the same way that we talk about drunk driving. You can drink on your own, but you do not have the right to go into public and drive a vehicle intoxicated where you could potentially harm others. I mean, it feels like we've been hesitant to take that hard line. And I've actually been quite critical of the Biden administration for not moving a lot faster on this. I wish that they had early on gotten behind proof of vaccination. I think it's ridiculous that we have this flimsy CDC paper card that you can buy on Amazon for a couple of dollars and fake really easily. I don't understand how we're doing that instead of actually having a secure system. I mean, we have the airport, you know, we don't use the honor system when people ask you, hey, who are you for your identification? You don't say.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do. And I think this is our last and best hope. I mean, we're not going to get there. We're not going to increase our vaccination rates dramatically by pleading with people. The polls that are showing that three in 10 people, once the vaccine is fully FDA approved, they're not lining up today to get vaccinated just because the FDA approval has come through. These are individuals who really need that additional push. And so I think it is going to be through mandates. I mean, we have to make vaccination the easy and convenient choice. And I really think the direction that we need to go is the direction that other countries have gone in, that the city of San Francisco most recently has gone in, which is to say, it's your choice to stay unvaccinated. That's fine. But if you want to enter the public sphere and interact with others, you don't have a right to give other people who are vaccinated or who are young kids.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I serve horsto vaccine hesitant. These are individuals who have questions, who have real concerns that need to be addressed, but who, when required for work or when required for travel, or when required to enter a bar or a restaurant or something else that they want to do, they will get the vaccine. They need that additional nudge or push. And I really believe that that's where a country has to go.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Centers. We brought the vaccines directly to schools to get kids vaccinated. I mean, those were the kinds of efforts that were really helpful. So it was a combination of getting access and making the vaccines mandatory, making them an opt-out was so crucial to reach this specific population who actually don't have a reason to not get vaccinated, except that they just didn't get around to it. The second anecdote that I'll give you is I still work in an urgent care clinic here in Baltimore clinically. And I was in clinic this morning, but also just in general, I still see a large number of patients who are not yet vaccinated. Very few of them, again, the same anecdote, the same kind of analogy here, very few of them actually are because of some deep-seated religious reason. I mean, I've talked to no one who said their reason is they think that they think it's related to President Trump or some Republican politician. I mean, that's not the reason for the communities that.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Course, so I'll share two anecdotes both from Baltimore, one from before and one from Noun. Every year at the beginning of school year, so I used to oversee school health. And every year at the beginning of each school year, there were hundreds, if not thousands of families that had not met the vaccination requirements in order to enter public school. Now, while maybe some of them, a very, very small handful, might actually have philosophical or religious reasons as to why they're not getting vaccinated, the vast, vast majority just didn't get around to it, as then they had so much else going on in their lives. I mean, I think about my own childhood, my parents were worried about making rent. They were worried about staying in this country. We didn't know where we were going to live. The childhood vaccinations are not at the top of your list when there's so much else going on. That was the case for nearly all these families that just did not get around to getting the vaccine. We then ended up setting up clinics. We brought children via buses to our”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are things that you try, you try to implement a big vision doesn't always work, doesn't always play out as publicly as this did. But on my end, I was very glad to have had the opportunity to try. And I also think that the work that I'm doing now in public health and the work that I think we all have ahead of us in public health is so important.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not only because of labor and delivery, but because women in general are not having our health needs being met. I also thought there is a real danger if Planned Parenthood is being pegged as abortion. And instead, we really need to be talking about all these services that's involved in women's health. And we should be expanding these services. It's the better message, but the right thing to do. And so, I mean, it was hard. You know, I tried really hard to reposition the organization in a way. It was hubris to think that it could work because one of my predecessors in the 1990s, an advanced practice nurse named Pam Muraldo, tried to do it too, and it didn't work. And so I would just say, you know, I have a lot of respect for the organization, a lot of respect for what the health centers continue to do to care for underserved women and families. And on my end, I mean, I recognize that.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so much of my life was about some degree of pain that became my overriding purpose. And so I guess I haven't, I mean, I appreciate your kind words, but I don't really think of my life as having a bunch of successes. I think about it as something terrible that spurred me to work on a particular issue and then working to overcome things that were very difficult in my life, including my mother's illness and stuttering and I talk in the book about infertility and postpartum depression and other things that were painful. So that's one thing. But the second thing to your point, I mean, it was very difficult. My entire experience at Planned Parenthood was very challenging. Leaving was very challenging too. I mean, I went to Planned Parenthood because I was very concerned about the state of women's health, that women today are more likely to die in pregnancy than our mothers, black women are three times more likely to die during labor and delivery.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll answer it in two different ways. One is I actually think that so much of my life wasn't about successes as in one of my mentors is the late congressman Elijah Cummings. Yeah.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Senior centers into libraries. I mean, something like that puts the face on public health and illustrates to people why it really matters.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so we used a very pragmatic approach to address many of these issues, including, as you mentioned, to treat violence as a public health issue. We also had programs to treat racism as a public health issue even back in 2015. And I was really proud of those types of innovative efforts that I thought put public health on the map because otherwise people don't understand what it is. And actually, in the time of COVID, we've seen what happens when public health is deprioritized because public health becomes underinvested and undervalued. And so we have to show every day why it matters. So while, for example, we work on longer-term projects about improving cardiovascular health, in the short term, we also partner with Shopright, a local grocery, to deliver fresh fruits and vegetables to seniors who otherwise would have to take two buses and walk ten blocks to get to go to a grocery store. We partnered with Shopright and got groceries right to”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. And that's the kind of work that we did that sometimes in public health, there is almost a decision paralysis, as in if public health by definition, it means your health is affected by the air that you breathe, the food that you eat, and then in return, education, public safety, these are all affected by health. And so sometimes people think, well, where can I even begin if everything is affected by everything else? But we try to show under my direction in Baltimore that you have to do something. We started a program, for example, to get glasses for every child who needs them in the city after a study showed that up to 10,000 of our school kids needed glasses but didn't have them. I mean, I don't need another study to tell me that if kids can't see, they can't read, they can't learn. And that's not the solution. Glasses are not the only solution to our education crisis. But if that's something tangible that we can be doing, then we should do that.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Scripts. But the idea is that everyone should be able to save a life. And then we did that tens of thousands of trainings on how to do this across our city and everyday residents were able to use naloxone to save over 3,000 lives in that three-year period.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Improving health for children and assisting with the most vulnerable, that we have to, in addition to improving health, we have to focus on reducing disparities. And so our naloxone work, I was very proud of because we had to come in and do something. I strongly believe that the opportunity in public health is you have the trifectum. You're able to work in policy and change the policy. You're able to implement the services directly, and then you're able to work in public education as well. And so with naloxone, we were able to get legislation changed in Maryland such that in June of 2015, I was able to issue a blanket prescription, which is essentially a prescription for every resident in the city for naloxome, so $620,000 people got a prescription in my name a little bit frightening as the physician to sign essentially $620,000.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Believed in that. I mean, public health ends up being about everything. I mean, my agency covered the things as widespanning as school health for every single one of our 180 schools to running senior centers, to doing animal control.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I again had initially intended to write the book entirely about Baltimore, so thank you for asking about this being the health commissioner for this for Baltimore in particular was my dream job. This is the oldest continuously operating health department in the country and also has a long history of having directors of the agency who are young go-getters who are able to get a lot done in a city that understands the value of public health in being a crucial tool to advance social justice aims. My predecessors, Peter Bielinson and Josh Sharfstein were also in their 30s when they took on the role and they championed many of these progressive initiatives that I was really that they were very proud of and that I continued and continued in their legacy as well. The mayor that I was appointed under initially mayor Stephanie Raleigh's Blake had a saying that if everything is a priority nothing is a priority and I really”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My mother had always said that as soon as I have children that she would move in and live with me. I don't know how my husband would actually feel about that, but I think that my mother would have really wanted to do that. And I think we would have connected in such a different way that”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, there's so much that I wish I could say to my mother now. I mean, my mother and I were having such a serious disagreement that she refused to attend my graduation from college. And then it turns out in looking at this, it looked like there were photos that somebody took. I don't know if she took them and actually went and took photos or whether she asked somebody else to take photos somehow. But I mean, that's the kind of thing that I just wish that I were able to connect with her now. There's so much that I wish I think, I mean, I don't know this for a fact, of course, but I just think if she were here, we would be really close down because we could connect over my children.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think about this now as a mom. I don't know how I want to be as a mother. I mean, I grew up in difficult circumstances. I don't want my children to grow up in similarly challenging circumstances. I want them to be appreciative of their privilege, but I don't want them to feel guilty because of it. And I'm not quite sure where that balance of pushing them, praising them. Do I praise them for everything just because they did something that's a good job? I mean, I don't know. And so I'm open to advice from you and your listeners.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know that that was my drive at all in terms of what I ended up doing my career. I mean, I see your point that I just always had this impression that I could never please my mother, that there was really, there was nothing that I could do that would make her happy. And she was also not at all a physical person. And growing up, I can really count on two hands, maybe even one hand, the number of times that I got a hug from her. I think that with my little sister, I try to be very different. And with my children now, I try to be very different to the point of overcorrecting, as I might, my husband is always like, oh, you're smothering the kids. You're always kissing them and hugging them. And my four-year-old is starting to say, oh, mom, mommy gross, which I was hoping that there would be more years before the gross mommy kisses thing came.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I wanted to figure out how to bridge that disconnect. So I think that shaped the course of what I ended up doing in patient advocacy. But also, you mentioned my relationship with my mother. My mother and I had many difficult conversations in that time. There were all these years of arguments. And we went through many months of not speaking to one another. So I think it was hard for us to make up for lost time. And I don't think we really did that. I don't think we really forgave each other. And it really wasn't until right before her death that we connected on a level that I wish that we had our entire lives. Now, my mother passed away in 2010, so she never had a chance to meet my children. And I think about her every single day, I mean, my mother loved kids. She was a teacher. She wanted nothing more than one day to have grandkids. And part of why I ended up writing this book too was I want my children one day.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the reasons why I took the initial year off from medical school was to be with her to help see her through her initial rounds of chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation. I was then, I flew back and forth over the course of the next eight years. And I was in residency when she eventually died from her cancer. You know, there's a lot that I can talk about here. I mean, one is the disconnect that so many patients face that I experienced firsthand because here I was going through my medical training. I saw that doctors and nurses were”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it took place over the course of eight years. So my mother called me when I was still in medical school. It was a second year medical student in St. Louis. My mother called me to say that something was wrong. She didn't know what it was, but she wasn't feeling right. And my mother was someone who never complained about anything. I mean, she worked so hard. She never complained about anything relating to her health. She always took care of everybody else and not herself. And she said that she was having trouble walking up the stairs. She was tired all the time. She'd gone to doctors and doctors were saying, oh, well, you're a teacher. Maybe you have a cold. At some point she was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. In any case, it took her a while, but she was eventually diagnosed with what turned out to be by then metastatic breast cancer, cancer that by then had spread to her lungs, her bones, and her brain.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Before that, I wasn't willing to let people see who I actually was. And that's actually the time that I read as hokey as it sounds. That was around the time that I read Bill Clinton's autobiography. And he had talked about how the Rhodes Scholarship was how he made these lifelong friends. And I don't know that this is why normal people applied to Rhodes, but I read that book and thought, I would love to have friends. So I think the Rhodes scholarship, that's a great thing for me to do.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wasn't teased because of my stuttering, but I avoided social situations in order for others to not hear my stuttering, as in I actively chose not to have friends because that would limit the amount of time that I would spend with them. I mean, it takes a lot of mental energy to plan two sentences ahead in case you might stutter on that word. And actually, once I stopped trying to circumvent my own speech, I recognized how much space there was in my brain to do other things because I wasn't thinking two sentences ahead. So it wasn't until after I addressed my stuttering that I actually started making friends for the first time, real friends for the first time because”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I mean, I belong to a group for people who stutter. And we all talked about this. And I actually wrote a post column about Braden Harrington and what this meant and what this meant to me and to other people, especially us who are covert stutters, is something very different, I think, that maybe other people who are listening because a lot of people heard Brayden and thought, that's great. We really applaud him. President Biden, how amazing that they connected. I mean, that's the right takeaway too. But for me, the takeaway is you can be a great communicator and still be disfluent because fluency does not equal being a communicator, a good communicator. You could be totally fluent and not be a good storyteller and communicator as well that ultimately this is about saying what you want to say when you want to say it. And Braden and showing his disfluency, that's what I had wished for my entire life.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The way to really work on your speech is to acknowledge that you are a person who stutters. And I basically ran from her office saying, I can't do this. And it took many months of meeting other people who stutter, including people who are lawyers and professors and NASA astronauts and stand up comedians and other people for me to recognize. I am not alone here. And so I still very much consider myself to be a person who stutters the moment I begin to think I'm not is the moment that I begin to have all these thoughts again about hiding my stuttering. And so Braden Harrington, who spoke man who spoke.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We can hide it, and in a way, it makes it worse because we know that there's a way to circumvent this and then to become such a source of shame and stigma. Actually, I did not address this issue of stuttering until I was well into my mid-20s. I was in medical school when I addressed this issue. And I am meeting my speech therapist for the first time who said to me,”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I still consider myself to be a person food stutters. So from the time that I was very little, really for as long as I can possibly remember, speech was probably the major barrier in my life. As in growing up in school, I thought about speech all the time because there would be words that I would be afraid, that I would be disfluent in, as in I might not be able to say the word sandwich, but if I felt like that was coming, I would say the one with the turkey. Or I wouldn't be able to say pencil. I thought P might be a problem. So I would say something to write with. I mean, as it turns out, there's a name for people with this type of condition that is being a covert stutter, as in there are some people who speech impediment is such that there's no way they could hide their disfluency. But for people who are covert.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I mean, I was so fortunate to people like that. And you mentioned that I applied to the MD PhD program because they provided a full scholarship. And I thought there was no way. I mean, I just could not fathom the amount of debt that one would have to go into if I didn't have a full scholarship. And of course, when I started medical school, I realized that the PhD path was not the right one for me. I still really like science. I value working in a lab. But I also got exposed to health policy. When I was a first-year medical student, I attended a conference at the American Medical Student Association. And I met people across the country who were doing work on advocating for healthcare, for universal healthcare, working on reducing disparities. I mean, all these things.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love St. Louis. Actually, Baltimore, where I live now, it reminds me a lot of St. Louis. There are deep problems, but also a lot of really committed, amazing people. I also actually loved medical school. It was getting into medical school was very hard. I remember I had talked to my pre-med office and my pre-med office had said to me with your test scores and your grades There are people who applied to 40 medical schools who are like you and they don't get into any of them. I said this to my mentor, Dr. Raymond Garcia, and he said to me in that case you have to apply to 41.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Go and work in the ER. I went to medical school before the days of the Affordable Care Act. And so I never wanted to be in a position where I had to turn patients away because of lack of health insurance, because they couldn't pay, because of where they happened to come from. And I was glad to be in the ER, but of course was also in the ER that I saw the limitations of what we do in medicine and actually that public health is that path in order to try to make a change in a more systemic way.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, very much so, and I also had asthma myself growing up. And so I had a lot of interactions myself in China with the medical system. And I understood that fear of what you have asthma, you can breathe in, but then you can't fully exhale. And then your next breath, you breathe in more, but then you still can't exhale. I know that feeling so well and the fear of not knowing whether you're going to have your next breath. And then I saw this happen right in front of my eyes with this neighbor. I think I was about 10 at the time and this boy was about eight. I can still see that moment as if it were yesterday. And I think it was this moment of recognizing that our society doesn't value people the same way and that we do not see healthcare as the fundamental human right that I strongly believe that it is. And so I had this vision early on that I wanted to work in communities like the ones that I grew up in. And I felt very strongly that I wanted to.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People who were physicians, I couldn't go to someone to ask how do I get into medical school? And it wasn't, it actually took a long time. I had said to my mentors that my goal was to become a lab tech because my parents had a friend whose daughter was a lab tech. I thought it was believable. And it took years actually for me to admit that what I wanted to do was to enter medicine.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, Cal State LA did have this early entrance program that allowed me to test into. There were other students, I think a couple dozen other students for my age. I didn't really get to know them though. And in retrospect, I regret it. I mean, retrospect, I think I would have had a lot in common with these other students. I didn't think that I was in college to make friends, frankly. I thought I was there to get through. I mean, I was working a lamb for however many hours I was allowed, I think 20, 30 hours or more a week. I wanted to be able to do that. I was also doing some tutoring on the side to try to make money. And I wanted to get through my courses. And I also didn't know how I was going to go to medical school. I mean, I had the stream from when I was young that I wanted to go to medical school. But my parents didn't, I mean, we literally didn't know anyone who was a doctor, as in I had a pediatrician, but my parents didn't know.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I did. But again, I would not, you know, I'm thankful to have had this opportunity. I was able to meet some incredible mentors in college who really believed in me. But this is not the path that I would choose if I had another option.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“didn't think that they could take care of me and my sister. My sister was sent back to China when she was just three weeks old, something that I have really, I get emotional thinking about this now because I can't imagine sending my own kids away when they were three weeks old and not seeing them for more than three years as was the case here. I thought I wanted to find a way to work and go to school at the same time and not have my parents worry about me so that we could bring my sister back. And so I found out about this program at Cal State LA that was a work study program where I was good at science. I could work in a lab and I could, if I, the only thing was I had to test into college and they also had an early entry program. So I guess I try to channel my mother in that moment. I thought if she could get into college with a fifth grade education, here I had an eighth grade education. And so I couldn't get into college.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I'll tell you why I did not, or what was not the decision, because sometimes when people find out that I went to college young, they say, oh, you must have been bored in school, or you must have been really smart, neither of which are true, as in I went to college early out of necessity, which is something that I will, I have two little kids. I have a four-year-old son who just turned four and a one-year-old, I would not want them to go down this path at all. You mentioned my instability growing up. I didn't have friends. I didn't have friends because I moved to so many different places, because I went to college young and I was so, I never, I didn't really want to tell people my age, I was so embarrassed about being a young person in college. I didn't really make friends until after medical school. I mean, this is not the life that I would want. And so why did I initially go was my parents had very difficult finances at that time. My sister,”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, instability characterized my childhood. We often didn't know where we were going to be. I mean, there was a moment too that I talk about in the book about how we didn't know what was going to happen with our immigration status. And my parents had this plan where my parents were going to get divorced. My father was going to enter a so-called paper marriage with someone. My mother and I were supposed to move to Canada. I mean, we had bought her plaintickets to go to Canada when we were granted political asylum. And I just think about all these moments when something could have gone in a very different direction. And who knows where I would be right now? Maybe I would be here today as a dreamer. I mean, all these things that we, as you mentioned, David, that somehow are seen as entitlements, that immigrants get somehow. I mean, that was never our intention as a family. We were so fortunate to have these services at different points in our lives that helped us to get to where we are.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My parents were professionals in China, who they knew when they came to the US that they would be working really hard, but I don't think they expected this level of struggle just to get by. I mean, my father was an engineer in China, and when he came to the US because he didn't speak English and also we had issues with his immigration status, he worked to deliver newspapers and wash dishes in a restaurant. My mother had come to the US to get a PhD, but then realized she couldn't really find a job easily with that. And so ended up studying separately to become a teacher. She ended up becoming a second grade teacher in Los Angeles. But during this period, she was working cleaning hotel rooms and working a video store. And we still could not make ends meet. We still depend on Medicaid for our health insurance when my mother was pregnant with my sister on WIC. And you mentioned that there were periods where we were experiencing homelessness.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I felt like I had to be, as in I start the book Lifelines with a quote in Chinese called Shuku, which means to eat bitter. And the whole phrase is supposed to mean you eat bitter in order to taste sweet, as in other people are sacrificing so that you could benefit from that. And I think I carried very much that sense of my parents, my grandparents, everybody's sacrificing at that time I was the only child and then my little sister was born when I was 11. She was sent back to China with the understanding that when my parents were settled more, when we had figured out our money issues, our immigration issues, she would come back and I felt this great burden on me, actually, to get settled myself so that my sister could come back to the US.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But here she was waking me up this kind of ungrateful child moaning about be woken up. But that's the reason why, though, I learned English so quickly.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Learn this new language. But going back to my mother, I have this other vivid memory of this time, which was my mother had said to me, you need to learn English, which was obviously the correct thing to do. But, you know, I was a child. I didn't really understand the things that I had to do to learn English, as then my mother said to me, you need to learn a hundred new vocabulary words every day to memorize the spelling, the definition, the usage of the word. And she would drill me at night. But what did that mean? She was studying and then working. And she would come home in the middle of the night and wake me up, drill me vocabulary words, and I remember being so resentful of that. Who else has to wake up at the middle of the night to memorize a hundred words? But now as a working mom myself, I just think how tired must my mother have been and how ungrateful was I. I mean, I'm sure she would have wanted nothing more than to put her feet up and then go to bed.”
2021-08-26 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 457 — Dr. Leana Wen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source