Connie Kim Yen Nguyen-Truong, (PhD, RN, PCCN) was born in Portland in 1976 and is an assistant professor at Washington State University College of Nursing – Vancouver. A nurse scientist with expertise as a community-based participatory research methodologist, she completed both her PhD and Postdoctoral Fellowship at OHSU’s School of Nursing. She is a Senior Fellow in the Asian Pacific Islander Community Leadership Institute (APICLI), as well as a member of the APICLI steering committee, and Co-Chair of IRCO Asian Family Center Advisory Board. Being Asian American and bilingual, bicultural Vietnamese, she is committed to conducting research with community and academic partners to reduce health disparities and to improve the health of Asian Americans. She has been engaged with the Asian American community and communities of color since 2006, as a volunteer nurse clinician, a collaborator at several health outreach events, and leadership advisory roles at community-based organizations.

Connie Nguyen-Truong begins by discussing her parent’s immigration from Vietnam to Portland in 1975 and explaining some of the challenges they faced as refugees in the United States. Nguyen-Truong mentions that the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization played an important role in both her parent’s resettlement and her own prenatal care. From there, Nguyen-Truong speaks about her experience growing up bilingual. As a child she spoke Vietnamese at home and learned English at school. Next, she discusses her college education, career path, and how she became involved in nursing. She explains the purpose and goal of her research with the Vietnamese Women’s Health Project. The interview concludes with a discussion of how the Vietnamese community in Oregon has changed and grown over time.