Wisconsin is home to the third largest population of Hmong Americans in the United States. But a new case study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows for the aging members of this community, there’s a gap in their quality of life in nursing homes.
“This work is also personal, right?” And for medical anthropologist Mai See Thao, the study conducted with researchers at the University of Minnesota and the University of Iowa was work that felt nostalgic—and not in a good way.
“Growing up in Wisconsin, my grandmother and my aunt went through the nursing home experience,” Thao, who is ethnically Hmong, said. “My aunt was actually doing very poorly because she was restricted to eating only the nursing home food. And so she was starving a lot of the time as well as my grandmother.”