Five Cal State Fullerton students from an Asian-American Studies class presented their
Five Cal State Fullerton students from an Asian-American Studies class presented their yearlong research conducted on women’s sexual and reproductive health on Tuesday in University Hall.
Tu-Uyen Nguyen, Ph.D., an Asian-American Studies professor at CSUF, hosted the presentation that included student speakers from her class.
The research presented focused on four topics which included community based participatory research, fact sheets on contraception use, social action projects and survey topics.
Nguyen Quach, 22, a health science major at CSUF, spoke on social action projects and goals of the yearlong research project.
A goal of the social action project is to propose a class on campus dedicated to women’s reproductive health issues, said Quach. This class would be meant to help spread the awareness of proper sexual health for women.
“We want to engage API college students in innovative advocacy and communications education, and we want to bring out studies from this class out to the communities about health sexual issues,” said Quach.
Tifa Do, 21, a human services major, said sex education is not always accepted in the Asian-American culture.
“Coming from an Asian-American heritage, it’s very hard for our families to talk about (sex education) openly, and a women’s reproductive health is not a topic that we bring up lightly,” said Do. “It’s really important for people to take care of themselves, because it could be our sisters, our mothers, our best friends that are going through that.”
Do said she hopes students who attend learn beneficial information that they can relay back to their friends and family.
Nguyen described how the course—Asian-American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Community Health Research and Field Studies—is broken up in two semesters.
The fall semester focuses on research methods and community based participatory research that sets the foundation for completing health research in Asian Pacific Islander (API) communities.
“Students put together questions (for the survey) and we sent it out via email to all the female students on campus—undergrads between the ages of 18 and 25—and they were asked to answer a series of questions,” said Nguyen. “We sent it out to over 14,000 students on campus and we got over 2,000 responses back.”
The spring semester focuses on students taking data from their research gathered during the fall and presenting it to an audience.
The Asian-American Studies class took an advocacy field trip to Washington D.C. which was funded by a grant from the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum.
Nguyen said students meet with legislators and visited Capitol Hill, a first for many students.
According to the presentation, the forum is the only multi-issue API women’s organization in the country. Their mission is to build a movement to advance social justice and human rights for API females.
Nguyen said she hopes students become more aware of their personal sexual health and utilize the campus resources from both the health center and communities that provide education.
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