Asian Women for Health

„As Asian Americans, we don´t have a prevention mindset and tend to only go to hospital when we´re sick” (in NBC News)

Born in Taiwan in 1964, Chien-Chi Huang came to Boston University in 1989 as a Master's student and graduated in 1991 with an M.S. in Mass Communication. After completing her studies, she worked as a freelance video producer. She is married and has two children.

At the age of 40, Ms Huang was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), a very aggressive and difficult-to-treat form of breast cancer that is more common in young women.

Based on her personal experience with the disease, she founded the ‘Asian Breast Cancer (ABC) Project’ in 2010. Here, Asian women receive financial, organizational and psychological support during their exhausting and sometimes traumatic cancer treatment.

 In 2012, Chien-Chi Huang founded ‘Asian Women for Health’ (AWFH), a non-profit organization of which she was Managing Director until 2023. AWFH is dedicated to promoting the health and well-being of Asian women and people from diverse, underrepresented groups through community engagement, education and advocacy. The program includes the provision of culturally appropriate health education through workshops and seminars. Here, women get to know each other, create their own network and at the same time break down their language barriers. In the latest project, the ‘Community Health Worker Training Program’, community health workers (CHWs) are specially trained to provide support, particularly in the event of language and cultural problems.

Over the years, AWFH's work has successfully improved health literacy within the immigrant community.

Ms. Huang envisions a world in which Asian women and other underrepresented members of society have access to culturally appropriate and high-quality medical care through knowledgeable information. This support is particularly important for Asian women, as in addition to language problems - especially among the older generation - there is also a reluctance to talk to doctors about medical issues relating to the female body. In addition, most Asians have not internalized the concept of preventive healthcare and only go to the doctor when they are already ill.