Meet Jackie Thu-Huong Wong

We were lucky to catch up with Jackie Thu-Huong Wong recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Jackie, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

My family story is one of the refugee experience. During the fall of Saigon, my family fled Vietnam, during civil unrest, to escape from persecution and to ensure that I would have the opportunity to live life more fully and without oppression. I was born during the Fall of Saigon, and every year on my birthday, I am reminded of the deep loss and sacrifices of my family’s journey to the U.S. Ultimately, their struggles and trauma became mine growing up and one that would be relived with every year on the day I came into this world. Like many during that time, they didn’t have the information or time to deal with the traumas they had faced as they fled their homeland nor did they know how this would impact their children including me who struggled emotionally to find a path to healing. What I was feeling was complex and I did not have the words or the framework to navigate through the deep trauma that I was experiencing and neither did my family.

I grew up where suffering was expected to occur in one’s life journey because it was supposed to build character. We were always told to look forward because looking back was too painful. We knew little about the long-term impact of unaddressed trauma. Feelings and emotions were rarely discussed growing up, but they made sure I focused on the future by pushing educational attainment. The one thing that I could always take with me. Though not always a linear path, I was able to find my purpose and passion. I became a social worker to help families and children who may have had a similar path and similar struggles. On this journey I began to learn how to heal myself and to hold space for others who were on their own path to healing. My resilience is rooted in the true belief that things that happen to us do not define us and that healing, and hope is what helps us persevere when times are challenging. This is all rooted in a long history of my ancestors who struggled and survived so I could thrive.

Today, I am proud to be the Executive Director of First 5 California, the first woman of color, the first English Learner and first refugee in this role. First 5 CA is California’s Children and Families Commission, and we are dedicated to the wellbeing of families and children birth through five years old statewide.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

When I joined First 5 California and we started down the path of finding ways to address and prevent childhood trauma, it was personal for me. I finally had a framework and research-based understanding of what I was experiencing. It is called toxic stress which is caused by prolonged, traumatic events called adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).

Over the past several years, First 5 California has been raising awareness for toxic stress and ACEs through our Stronger Starts campaign. I am so moved by this campaign because it will help others understand and reframe their experiences growing up. We are able to provide the resources and understanding families need to prevent and address the harmful impacts of toxic stress on children.

Pediatricians in California, as well as other states, are starting to look at health through a lens of early trauma experienced by children, whether it be parental separation, growing up in a household where there is substance abuse or violence, mental illness or physical or sexual abuse. What ACEs researchers have been telling us for decades now is that prolonged exposure to trauma in children leads to toxic stress, which can have a mental and physical impact on a child’s health well into adulthood; conditions like asthma, diabetes, depression, anxiety, hypertension, stunted growth and also proven to have a negative impact on educational achievement and learning.

The impacts of ACEs and toxic stress have real costs and states spend billions each year trying to unpack the symptoms of unaddressed ACEs without addressing the root cause. The CDC recently estimated that $14 trillion is spent in the U.S. each year in medical spending and economic loss from shortened life spans connected to ACEs. It is imperative that we understand not only the economic impact, but also understand the social impact on families and communities over generations.

It is our hope that the messages of the Stronger Starts campaign permeate deeper within our health, public health and education systems to create the safe, stable, nurturing environments that are necessary for children’s healthy development. Based on the research and science, we know that we can buffer against the negative impacts of ACEs and more importantly we can heal and live fuller, longer, and healthier lives. We cannot change our history, but we can affirmatively change our longevity by taking the necessary steps to creating safe, stable and nurturing relationships and environments that are the proven medicine to address trauma.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Three qualities that I think were helpful in my journey are 1) Be open to change, and adaptable to new ideas. One never knows where or from whom inspiration and transformation will happen, stay curious; 2) Be unapologetically bold, but rooted in core values that guide you much like a North Star. We are given one opportunity to create the life and world we want to live in and the one we want to leave the next generation. Do not waste your time, talent or treasure on things that do not bring you closer to this world.; and 3) Be passionate about the things you care about, but do not let that passion blind you from building bridges to places that you have yet to explore, see and grow from. It is through new experiences and hearing different perspectives that will help you become more connected to the world and people who will bring us all closer to humanity. We are not alone.

Ultimately, start small and be collaborative with anyone sharing your goal to have the greatest impact. As a community it should be our goal to bridge divides and increase understanding. The Stronger Starts campaign was not created overnight. This effort is a culmination of decades of research and medical practice to build the foundation for this critical message. It required champions like Dr. Nadine Burke Harris who was instrumental in this work, as she studied ACEs as a pediatrician and brought her many years of expertise to the as California’s first surgeon general. We at First 5 California are hard at work spreading messages to parents and caregivers about the importance of paying attention to ACEs and toxic stress through media, community events and partner organizations–we know this will take a village to accomplish our vision, but we want all families in California to be aware and to have the resources they need to support their children when they go through challenging times.

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?

The most impactful book that comes to mind is The Deepest Well by Dr. Nadine Burke Harris. The book is about her experience in the San Francisco neighborhood Bayview Hunters point and the community she worked with just across the Bay from where I was practicing social work. This book changed the way I understood my own personal journey, but more importantly it gave me a new framing for what I was seeing in the children, families, and communities that I was working with in Oakland.

It provided a public health framework for intergenerational healing that has fundamental roots in the science of healing. In this day and age, it is so commonplace to take a pill for a headache or ask for a prescription for physical ailment. This book reframed the way I understood what I was seeing, that the ailments were just symptoms of the root cause and that the treatment for the root cause is within our reach. Safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments are not just “feel good” or “hippy dippy” things to do, they are necessary and the science shows that there is a biological response that heals us physically and supports our longevity and overall health. And for our young ones, it supports increased brain development and improves developing immune systems.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.first5california.com
• Instagram: @first5california
• Facebook: @First5California
• Linkedin: First 5 California
• Twitter: @First5CA
• Youtube: @First5CA