On this edition of Your Call, we have a conversation about "Nursing These Wounds," a dance performance that investigates the impact of colonization on Filipinx health and caregiving through the lens of Filipinx nurses’ history.
According to National Nurses United, people of Filipino descent make up 4 percent of California’s population but 20 percent of the state’s nursing force. And the Migration Policy Institute research shows that Filipinx healthcare workers make up 28 percent of immigrant registered nurses in the US. Filipino nurses are overrepresented in dangerous and low-wage jobs in the medical field. According to a Mercury News, early in the pandemic Filipinx nurses accounted for nearly one third of COVID deaths among registered nurses.
How have Filipinx healthcare workers shaped the United States medical field? How have US policies created structural inequalities that continue to impact Filipinx nurses today?
Guests:
Alleluia Panis, choreographer and director at KULARTS, and the creator of "Nursing These Wounds"
Claire Valderama-Wallace, assistant professor in the department of nursing at California State University East Bay
Web Resources:
KULARTS: Nursing These Wounds
Vox: Why the US has so many Filipino nurses
Mercury News: California’s Filipino American nurses are dying from COVID-19 at alarming rates