UW-Madison researcher wants to improve the Hmong experience in Midwestern nursing homes


By Anna Marie Yanny | February 4, 2025

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  • Hands of Pearl and Edith. Photo courtesy of sparkle glowplug/Flickr

Hands of Pearl and Edith. Photo courtesy of sparkle glowplug/Flickr

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Medical anthropologist Mai See Thao researches what life is like for refugees long after they’ve resettled in a new place.

“There’s a lot of literature and a lot of investigation around what refugees need when they’re being resettled,” Thao said. “But there’s not the question of: how do refugees live in the U.S.? And that’s where my work has been.”

Her research has highlighted experiences of Hmong people, an ethnic population from Southeast Asia. Many became refugees after the Vietnam War. Wisconsin is home to one of the largest Hmong populations in the nation, 62,331 people according to a 2020 report.

Thao, who is Hmong, was born into a refugee camp in Thailand. About a year later, her family resettled in Wisconsin.

“Growing up as this child of this whole refugee experience, I got to witness a lot of my parents’ experiences through the healthcare system,” she said.

Experiences that she didn’t see reflected in readings during her time as an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. There, she read “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down,” about a Hmong family navigating the American medical system and epilepsy treatment. It was written by Anne Fadiman, a journalist who didn’t speak Hmong.

“I just knew that if I didn’t do the work, no one was gonna do it,” said Thao, who is now an assistant professor of Anthropology and Asian American Studies at UW–Madison.

Mai See Thao is an assistant professor in UW-Madison's Department of Anthropology and Asian American Studies. <i>Photo courtesy of Mai See Thao</i>

Mai See Thao is an assistant professor in UW-Madison’s Department of Anthropology and Asian American Studies. Photo courtesy of Mai See Thao

She recently led a case study that showcased a poor quality of life for Hmong residents in a Minnesota nursing home. For four months, she observed life at the home and interviewed Hmong residents and staff. The findings were published Aug. 14, 2024 in the “Journal of Applied Gerontology.” Because the home was unnamed in the study, WPR couldn’t reach them for comment.

“In the paper, there’s talk about this sense of abandonment and isolation,” Thao said, recalling her interviews with Hmong residents. “For me, they experienced that in the refugee camps. And I don’t want them to experience that in a nursing home in the U.S.”

Thao conducted all the resident interviews in Hmong. She often heard about language barriers in the facility.

“When residents needed care, they weren’t always able to access a Hmong person to ask for what they needed,” Thao said. “Language can contribute to neglect or just waiting for when your next bath was going to be.”

Hmong residents also told her they felt “white residents were being taken care of better than they were,” she added.

A call for culturally sensitive care

Thao said nursing homes don’t need to go to researchers like her to learn how to improve their care. They can ask families.

Thao’s grandmother was in a Wisconsin nursing home. People had to alert staff that she didn’t drink cold water.

“This stuff is also personal for me,” Thao said.

“She wasn’t drinking water because they were giving her ice water … But she only drinks warm water or hot water,” Thao added. “That’s the culture that we institute in these places of care.”

‘Like you’re a caged pig’

When Thao wrote the case study, she and her collaborators chose to keep a key phrase in Hmong: “lam nyob,” or “just live and wait to eat.” Residents often used it to describe life in the nursing home.

“The choice to keep that Hmong word was really important because it really encompasses a different kind of feeling that I think English doesn’t allow us for,” she said. “We chose to then translate what they said: Sometimes when you live in the nursing home, it’s like you’re a caged pig. You just wait and live to just eat.”

She also found residents didn’t like the nursing home food. But there was more to it than that. Thao said food, and culturally sensitive food, is important to people’s well-being.

A Hmong nurse told her, “We’ll always tell the family, you gotta bring food to your loved ones for them to get better.”

“That was the most heartbreaking thing,” Thao said. “These staff members understand the limitations of nursing home care, especially for diverse residents.”

It’s important that nursing homes evaluate their culture, system and policies to serve all their residents, Thao said. Next, she’s working on a research paper about culturally sensitive care.

She hopes her work helps inform nursing homes to better care for residents of other ethnicities and refugee populations.

Anna Marie Yanny

Anna Marie Yanny

Anna Marie Yanny is the 2024-2025 Lee Ester News Fellow and a general assignment reporter in WPR’s Madison newsroom. Since moving to Wisconsin, she’s frozen her eyelashes, adored the bike trails, and eaten a brat at Lambeau.
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2025-02-04T14:44:13-06:00Tags: , , , , , , |

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