Introduction
About the Project
Welcome! My name is Marissa, and I am an undergraduate student at Yale University. I was granted the opportunity to study Traditional Vietnamese Medicine in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, for nearly five weeks, under the Council on Southeast Asia Studies Grant, Saybrook College Research Fellowship, and Richter Summer Fellowship.
The inspiration for this project derives from my experiences with medicine during childhood. Growing up in a Vietnamese household in the United States, I stood at a middle ground, receiving modern care in the clinic and traditional remedies passed down by generations of my family. Encountering scientific articles revolving traditional medicine in my studies, I was also intrigued by recent publications on the integration of traditional medicine with modern treatments, illustrating the merits of providing patients with holistic care.
Ultimately, the goal of this project is to (1) bring exposure to traditional Vietnamese Medicine and (2) see how this treatment has evolved and integrated with modern techniques in the 21st century, culminating in a source accessible to all interested.
Important Project Disclaimers
Official translation services were not purchased due to limited funds for this exploratory project. To ensure the integrity of direct quotations, each interview was recorded with the consent of the interviewee. Recordings were then used to translate Vietnamese to English and verified via cross-comparison across translation platforms for accuracy such as Google Translate, Translate Now, and Vdict.