Elaine studied at UBC, earning both her Honours BSc and PhD at the university. In 2008 she was recognized as a Future Leader by the Women’s Executive Network of Canada at their annual Top 100 Women in Canada gala. Her story was also seen in the Globe and Mail last November.
Elaine is certainly a Shad Valley alumna to watch as she strives to empower women’s health care. This summer will mark her fifteenth anniversary since attending Shad Valley. Congratulations to Elaine on her continued success!
The following story features Shad Valley alumna, Elaine Chong, in Chatelaine’s March 2009 edition as one of five women who are ‘Making a Change’ in health care:
Elaine Chong
Pharmacist and acting director at the B.C. Ministry of Health Services, 32, Vancouver
As a girl in Trail, B.C. – a small town where, she jokes, half the 40 Asian residents were relatives – Elaine Chong acted as an interpreter in the doctor’s office for her Chinese grandmothers. Like some other recent immigrants, they’d never learned to speak or read English, so it fell to their young granddaughter to assist with their medical care. Today, the Vancouver pharmacist (the first in her family to earn a university degree) is on a mission to help other immigrants get the health care they deserve.
Why her work matters so much:
Immigrant women are much less likely to have family doctors
Immigrant women are much less likely to have family doctors
than Canadian Born women are
While finishing her post-doctoral studies at the University of British Columbia, Chong worked with the Asian Women’s Health Clinic. Staffed by multilingual female doctors, the clinic screens for breast and cervical cancers – Asian women in B.C. suffer from the latter at almost four times the rate of white women. This is often due to a reluctance to undergo intimate exams, and though Chong is encouraged by women who “take charge of their health care in their own language and culture,” she worries about those “who are lost to the system.”
Now an acting director for the B.C. Ministry of Health Services, Chong works with a team of pharmacists who advise doctors about the best drug treatments for their patients. But her goals reflect her roots: “I think it’s so important for women to be educated about their medications and conditions, and to be empowered in their own health.”
Article by Elaine O’Connor, Chatelaine March 2009, p. 160
