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Today is May 4, 2020. I'm here interviewing Dr. Katherine King for the Houston Asian American archive. My name is Priscilla Li.

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So the first question is where and when were you born? I was born in Houston, in 1974. How would you describe the neighborhood you grew up in? My parents moved to Houston in the late 60s and

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bought a house right near Rice University. And it's a wonderful neighborhood and they—my dad still lives in the same house. And so I had a very idyllic childhood with a really wonderful

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community, schools, and neighbors. And where did they move from? My parents met in the Philadelphia area. But before that—so they had both come to the United

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States as students. My mom from Taiwan and my dad from Hong Kong. And actually my dad had left Hong Kong in the early 1950s

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to study in Germany. He got a scholarship at that time in the post war era, to study in Germany and he studied electrical engineering. And then after that, he went to Penn to do his

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PhD in electrical engineering. So they, my parents, actually met each other in the Philadelphia area. So what languages did they speak in—like when you're growing up?

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We spoke Mandarin at home. My dad spoke Shanghai dialect and Cantonese and Mandarin. And my mom spoke mostly Mandarin.

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So they settled on Mandarin at home. So I spoke Mandarin before I spoke English. But I spoke English from pretty early on because I have an older sister who started to go to

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school and then I went to school when I was three years old. So, so pretty early on, I started to speak English as well. We were certainly the only Chinese family in our community, when I was growing up.

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In the neighborhood that I was—that I grew up in there was mostly a white neighborhood--really no other Asians that I could think of and not really any other racial or ethnic diversity. And in the—we went to the

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public school, Poe Elementary, that's zoned to that neighborhood and we were the only Asian family. I remember, actually my parents handled that very well. They took a lot of pride in being the only Chinese

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family and introduced the whole school community to Chinese food and some Chinese customs. And my sister and I did some Chinese art demonstrations for the school like Chinese dance.

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And were people usually receptive of Chinese culture? Yeah, for the most part, people were very receptive and very welcoming, and actually eager, I think to learn about Chinese culture through some real-life, Chinese people.

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So yes, for the most part, people were very encouraging. And as a kid, I think I— was what I was used to.

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And I don't, I don't think that I really saw myself as being different necessarily. We did have one or two instances of sort of a negative experience, but for the most part, we didn't

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really experience any negative effects of being the only Asians around. And what kind of fun things would you do like after school during your childhood? Yeah, there was a number of neighbors, children who lived on the

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block that I played with. They were mostly Caucasian kids, and we would ride our bicycles up and down the street or run around, play tag, play in a fort.

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My parents would sometimes take us to the neighborhood swimming pool in the summertime, so we got to swim. And I played, I played on the soccer team in the neighborhood, which at that time in the 1980s it was boys and girls

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together. And we went and did gymnastics at the local neighborhood YMCA—CA those kinds of things. I know you said your father studied electrical engineering as a career.

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Did he do that as a career? So he—my parents moved to Houston because he got a job as a professor of computer science at U of H. So the Department of

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Computer Science was established in about 1967. And so my dad was one of the very first computer science faculty. And at that time, the field of computer science was just being

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established. So pretty much all the professors at the time had degrees in electrical engineering and not in computer science because previously computer science didn't exist. So he became a faculty at U of H in

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1969 and stayed on faculty for 40 years at U of H and so he really built the computer science department there at U of H.

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And growing up did he ever encourage you to go into computer science or did you know what kind of like career-wise what you're interested in doing growing up? My parents encouraged me to do whatever I wanted to do and to

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pursue my interests. I think my parents were open to the idea of me doing computer science, but I don't think I particularly showed an interest in that area.

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So, I did a little bit of computer classes when I was in high school, but not much. But yeah, I think that my parents very heavily emphasized the importance of education.

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They were very much supportive of both me and my sister to pursue our interests and to, to find something we were passionate about that we could do. And I think they, both of my parents, well, they made

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things very wonderful for me and my sister in that they absolutely prioritized our education over everything else in their lives. So they really made the conditions great for both me and my sister to

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have everything we needed to, to study and to have the time and the stability in our lives to focus on our schooling. So we never really had to

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worry about anything else in terms of where our next meal was going to come from or what our home life was going to be like, or any other jobs that we had to do. We really were enabled the freedom to focus on

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our studies. And we also both did things like played piano and did some sports and other extracurricular studies. So the other thing that I would say my parents instilled in us was an appreciation

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for the value of community and the value of service to the community. I think we both, my sister and I, both really grew up with a sense of commitment to service

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and to doing something for the betterment of society. And that was always sort of understood. Um, so you said your parents met in Philadelphia was your mother also studying there for like grad

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school or undergrad? Philadelphia is very close to Washington, DC. And actually at the time she was working at a school in Washington, DC. So my mom had studied early childhood development and early

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childhood education, and she came to the United States from Taiwan. Actually, she was born in mainland China and then she and her family immigrated to Taiwan.

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That was in the late 1940s, mid 1940s. Then she moved to Boston to do her master's degree in early childhood education. And she

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initially lived in Boston. And then after that she got a job teaching at a preschool for children with special needs. And that was in the Washington,

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DC area. So she was working and she and my dad had mutual friends who introduced them to each other. And then can you describe your schooling in Houston, like where you went to—for elementary, middle, high school and if you had any influential teachers or mentors

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growing up? Right, so as I mentioned, my mom was a specialist in early childhood education. And so, when I was a preschooler, she was the president of the Poe-Co,

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Poe Cooperative Nursery School, which is a cooperative nursery school associated with Poe Elementary, which is the local elementary school to which our house was zoned. So that elementary school1 was started in the 19—early 1970s, I think

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1971. And it's a cooperative nursery school in the sense that the teachers, there are teachers, but there are also parents that—all of the parents are required to participate actively in the education of

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the children, including spending time in the classroom. Um, so it's a cooperative between the school and the parents. My mom was very instrumental in the starting of that school, which is still in existence today, and she

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served as the president of the school at the time that I was there. So I had the benefit of having a parent who was really involved in my own education from the time that I was like three years old. So after Poe-

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Co, both my sister and I went to Poe Elementary, which is the public school, HISD school that our house was zoned to, and we had a great time there. It was a—it remains a very good school.

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And it, at the time that we were students there, it was not so long after integration of schools in Houston and so there was busing and there were children of various ethnic groups who came to Poe.

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Um, so it was a pretty even mix between African-American, Hispanic and Caucasian students. And we had a very nice, diverse set of classmates there, and a lot of wonderful teachers.

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And some teachers that I stayed in touch with, even after I left Poe. I had a first-grade teacher named Miss Blair, who was really great. And there was a famous math teacher named Sarah

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Morgan. Many, many generations of Poe students will remember she was a very inspiring teacher, taught there for decades, and I was one—I was in fourth grade during her last

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year teaching. So I was lucky that I had her. So after Poe, both my sister and I went to St. John's, a private school in Houston, starting in

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middle school, and ended up graduating from there in high school. And this is something that I think attests to the prioritization that my parents placed on our education because it was very expensive to go to St.

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John's. But—and my parents didn't make a whole lot of money, but they saved what money they had for us to go to St. John's. And so I had a wonderful time at St.

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John's. Um, there were many great teachers that I had there. I was involved in student government throughout my time at St. John's and I took Latin for five years at St.

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John's all the way through AP Latin, and had a teacher named Tony Sirignano, who actually I also took philosophy from my senior year. So I basically add him every single year of high school.

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And so he became kind of somebody I felt was part of my family—or I became part of his family. He was very influential for me, because I think he introduced

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me to the classics, and to a tradition of higher education that values thought and philosophy and sort of the value of thinking about the meaning of life.

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And that was very helpful, insightful to me. But there were many, many excellent teachers at St. John's. Alice Kagi was my biology teacher for both biology one and AP

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Biology and she was actually my neighbor in my community. And she was a great teacher. And, and Dwight Raulston, who still teaches at St. John's was my English teacher and was very inspiring.

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So I had a great education at St. John's, it gave me a really strong basis in lots of fields. Not just science and math, which is what I do professionally

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now, but particularly in writing in English and Latin. But writing is a skill that's really fundamental to everything I do right now and I really value the education I got in writing. And I think part of the education of writing

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is education in thinking and that was the theme. So in high school, what was like I guess the college application process like for you? Were you just looking at schools in Texas or did you apply throughout the country?

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1 The interviewee means to say the preschool instead. So I, in the summer after my junior year at St. John's, I applied to and was accepted to the Research

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Science Institute, RSI, which is a science camp for, at the time, it was 100 high school students from across the United States.

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They accepted two per state. And then they also had international participants. So maybe it was a total of about 120 kids. There had been other kids from St.

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John's who had gotten into that program in the past, and that's how I knew about it. So I went there for six weeks in the summer of 1991, and it was just a fantastic experience because

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it was my first time living in a dorm away from home. So it was a very freeing experience. And I was with 100 other kids who were really smart, and really passionate about science, and who shared

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an enthusiasm for learning. So that was really, really fun. That actually influenced my college decision quite a bit because many of—so that was

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the summer before my senior year. And as soon as I got back home, I was trying to work on my college applications. And many of the participants from that summer camp were planning—hoping to go to Harvard

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and in fact, I applied to Harvard. And I-I applied there early decision or early action. Early action, which is non-binding, but it's you can get an early offer.

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And then I remember that I visited the campus for like a pre- a preview weekend and I got to see a number of my friends from the RSI program at that preview weekend. So I have to—I have to say I think that really influenced me a lot was -- that idea

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of going to college with some of the smart, energetic and fun people that I met at RSI was appealing to me. So, I applied to—since I got into Harvard early action, then I really cut down how many applications I sent

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out, I really didn't apply to many other places. I think I applied just to Stanford, and then I ended up deciding to go to Harvard. So I don't know, I don't, I

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don't usually talk about that very much because I feel like high school students these days have a lot more pressure on them about college. And it's a lot more competitive than when I was applying. And, and I don't think

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I don't think people should feel like what school they go to sort of the end all be all of their future. While I really appreciated my time at Harvard, and had a good time there, I think there was also—it wasn't perfect.

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And I think there's lots of other excellent colleges out there at which I would have had a really good and productive experience. So yeah, for whatever that's worth. Um, and then what did you or what years did you attend Harvard?

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I was there from 1992 to 1996. And what did you end up majoring in and how did you reach out that decision? I majored in biochemical sciences, which is what they call their biochemistry major. I think I, I was

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always interested in science as was evident when I applied to that summer research program. And somehow I always had it in my head that the responsible thing to do would be to do something scientific

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because it would, it would lead to a steady job, and it would lead to service to the community in some—in some substantive fashion. That's why I thought it was the right choice.

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I really enjoyed my time doing research and science in high school and liked my science classes a lot in college. In college, I joined a lab

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and was doing research in plant biology, and it was really interesting. But at the same time it was—there wasn't a whole lot of energy in that field. It seemed like all the attention and the money and the and the

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excitement was in the biomedical realm. I could see that and so I somebody told me—actually, my mom's friends, told me about this MD- combined MD-PhD program when I was in college. I actually

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had not been planning on going to medical school, but then when I found out about the MD-PhD program, I thought, “Oh, that's a really cool opportunity to do both medical school and PhD research.” So I kind of got excited about that opportunity.

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Um, so did you join any other labs besides the plant biology lab and did any, any experiences in college affect what you ended up researching in medical school? Yeah, no, I stayed with that lab.

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I joined that lab as a sophomore and stayed with it all the way through my senior thesis. And it was a pretty small lab, but I stuck with it. And I think the thing that

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really influenced my choice about what I did later was that actually I was part of the Freshmen Outdoor Program, which is called FOP. And the Freshmen Outdoor Program is an orientation hiking program for freshmen who are going into Harvard.

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So they take kids to hiking for a week, basically, in the White Mountains on the Appalachian Trail, and it's a way to get to know about ten other incoming freshmen and a couple of senior classmen and just

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have an introduction into Harvard life before school starts. It's a lot of fun, and it was the first time I really experienced backpacking. So I did that as a

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freshman, and then I really enjoyed it so much. So I became a leader for that group the next year, and when you become a leader for that group, you go through some wilderness outdoor first aid training. So

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you became so so you actually get to go up to New Hampshire and spend a few days at an outdoor leadership school. And you get pretty extensive training in wilderness first aid.

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So I got trained as a wilderness first responder, and that was really my first experience with what you might call medical care. It was super fun and—and I really enjoyed it. And I thought, “Man, it's so it's so gratifying to have a set

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of skills with which you can practically help people, you know, in a real life situation.” So I really, really liked that and part of that experience made me think that maybe I wanted to go to medical school. And

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that was around the time that I found out about the MD-PhD program. So I'd say that those two things combined with the sense of sort of a lack of energy in the plant biology field, led me towards going into

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biomedical research and medical school. Okay, and can you describe a little bit about, I guess, the student life that you participated in at Harvard, any like extracurricular clubs that you participated in? I know that you mentioned the FOP

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program. Yeah. So I did, I did participate with the FOP program. And I actually spent one summer in college staying on campus for the summer to work for that program.

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I, you know, maybe interesting to you, I participated in the Asian American Dance Troupe, AADT. And I had done some Chinese dance throughout growing up, and so there's an Asian American dance troupe on campus

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at Harvard and so I joined that and we did some—we got together and practiced dancing. And we also did some performances for cultural festivals or

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for—at Chinese New Year time in Chinatown. I also, I also participated as a freshman in an adult literacy program, which was trained to teach adults who were

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illiterate how to read and I was matched up with an older woman who lived in Chinatown, a Chinese woman who was hoping to learn how to read in English. So I went down to Chinatown once a week and spent time with her.

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Those were some of the things that I did. And then—so you mentioned how your mother introduced you to the MD-PhD program. Had you heard about like, what it was like to be a part of an MD-PhD program?

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Like the rigor of it or the time commitment? No, I really didn't know. I knew that it was going to be a long program. They said it would be eight

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years. And that's about all I knew, but I suppose that of course, people knew that medical school must be hard. But I wasn't really intimidated by the idea of working hard, I think because I had done so since

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forever. And I think I like the idea of a challenge--the idea of working towards some challenging goal. But, but yeah, I hadn't heard about that program until I heard about it through my

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mom's friend. And yeah. Um, so what medical school did you end up attending and from what years did you attend that school? I went to Washington University in St.

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Louis from 1996 until 2003. So I was actually able to finish my degree in seven—my two degrees in seven years. I had a good time there.

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I—that was one of the most fun, productive periods of my life, I would say. I think that at Harvard, I felt that I had a really good experience and I worked hard, but there was a lot of pressure.

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And, and I could feel that pressure and, and there was also a little bit of a sense of anonymity at Harvard that it was really big and there was a lot of famous professors but there weren't necessarily a lot of professors

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that kind of knew the undergrads by name and interacted with them on a personal level. So I appreciated that when I—when I got to WashU, that it was a much more congenial

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feeling. I felt that the professors were more interested in connecting with the students on an individual basis and spending time with students, so—so I really enjoyed that.

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So, I actually just had my 20th med school reunion with my classmates on Friday, so I got to see some of my classmates. And those were the medical school classmates that I started with in 1996, whom graduated in

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2000. I had 20 MD-PhD classmates, and I'm still really close friends with many of those 20 people. Obviously we were—we were together for somewhere between six and seven years.

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And yeah, so that was a good experience. So I did—I studied microbiology for my PhD, worked on Group A strep, which is the pathogen that causes strep throat.

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And so I really enjoyed the research and found it exciting and fun and productive. And yeah, had a good time.

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And—and life was pretty simple and carefree then. We were all graduate students and medical students together and all. We all lived in apartments that were pretty close to campus and we would get together to study or to

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eat or to play soccer in the evenings. So, yeah, it was a good community. Um and then were you able to like, decide on your research topic for a PhD

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program or did you just like chose a mentor and then help them with their research? Right so the way the program was designed and most programs are still designed is that you do rotations.

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You select a couple of investigators whose research you find interesting and you would do a rotation with them meaning to spend a couple of—excuse me—a couple of months in their lab, getting to

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know the research and getting to know some of the people in the lab. So I did that and I worked in that Group A strep lab and I worked in a malaria lab and then I decided to join the lab of the Group A strep studies that was

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Mike Caparon’s lab. And, and he had some projects ongoing. So he helped me to develop what turned out to be my thesis project.

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So I had a little bit of autonomy about it, but it was certainly heavily guided by my advisor. And then where did you end up going for your residency and fellowship programs and what was like the decision process that you went through?

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I think I was influenced heavily by my mom I had enjoyed working with kids all my life. So I was interested in pediatrics, and then I decided that it would be a good combination, to combine pediatrics with infectious

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diseases, and that was highly relevant to my microbiology background. So I decided to apply in pediatrics and did a fellowship in pediatric infectious

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diseases. I applied around the country, but at the time, and it's still true today, you know, the big training places for pediatrics are—one of them is in Houston. So, Baylor has one of the strongest pediatric training

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programs in the country. And I thought, well, this is a really great opportunity to go back home for a little bit, be close to my parents, since I had been away since I went to college. And, and it was a three-year

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training program. So I thought well, that, you know, there's no reason that I shouldn't take the opportunity to do some of the best training that's available and do it closer to my parents. So, so I did that. So that was 2003 until 2006.

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And at the time, Ralph Feigin was the chair of pediatrics and he's a famous pediatric infectious disease doctor. So not only was pediatrics really strong in Houston, but

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specifically pediatric infectious disease was very strong. So, so I did that. And then I was asked to be one of the chief residents

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in pediatrics, the year after I finished my residency. So I stayed and did that from 2006 to 2007. That's a leadership and teaching role. That's— that's kind of an honor.

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So I did that. And then I applied for fellowship. And so I considered a number of different fellowship training programs around the country, but then ultimately decided to stay at Baylor for that period of my training as well.

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And so, partly because of the strengths that I mentioned that it is a really fantastic place for infectious disease training. And that's also bolstered by the fact that we're in Houston and we get tons of international

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travelers from all over the country and the world and, and they bring with them many interesting infectious diseases. So that makes

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for a good training environment. Okay. Um, and then kind of holistically this question is: How has the medical field changed from when you were studying it as a medical student to like now as a researcher and

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physician? There—there is just this explosion of knowledge in the field of biomedical sciences. And so, I mean,

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many of the standard techniques that are available in research now, were not invented at the time that I was doing my undergraduate and graduate training. And, so the, the field just moves very rapidly, and

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what's important to know now is probably different from what's what was important to know, then. So, yeah. So I mean, part of, I think, that's part of the appeal, actually, of

00:35:18.550 - 00:35:36.540

biomedical sciences and medicine is that it is always changing and it's always new and interesting. So I'll give an example.

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My undergraduate project when I was an undergraduate at Harvard, was to use an old method called Sanger sequencing with silver stained gels, to look for the sequence of

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a gene. And what my project was doing was to look for a class of genes that are called protein kinases that are involved in signaling, in a plant, a model plant

00:36:07.270 - 00:36:20.170

species called Arabidopsis. So I basically spent three years trying to do that. It was very laborious, but it was felt to be important to understand how plants work and how plants

00:36:22.460 - 00:36:44.140

get pollinated. Today, the—there's capacity to sequence, you know, billions of base pairs of DNA in a day, and so it's just laughable actually,

00:36:44.140 - 00:36:59.620

to think about what I spent two and a half years doing then which is just like one day's work today. So not only has the technology changed, but of course, the capacity to do that amount of

00:36:59.660 - 00:37:11.940

sequencing changes what everything we know. And so now, what's known today about the genetic basis of disease is just huge

00:37:12.020 - 00:37:30.310

compared to what was known then. And what's possible yet to discover using genetic information is really huge. So that's one example. I should say that—during my fellowship, I changed my research course, so

00:37:30.310 - 00:37:44.100

that I veered away from microbiology into working on stem cell biology, and I work on—and that's what really set the stage for what I do now in my independent research. I work on bone marrow stem cells, and how the body makes

00:37:44.210 - 00:37:57.690

blood. And that's a really critical thing to understand in terms of fighting infections that we need to be able to make blood cells to fight infections. So there's a very dynamic interaction between blood production and infections and the immune system.

00:37:59.510 - 00:38:09.350

So that's—that's really the heart of what I study. And I started doing that when I was a fellow. So that was about two-thousand and—well, the year is from 2007 to 2010.

00:38:09.970 - 00:38:23.490

And I started working with my mentor, Peggy Goodell, and she remains a critical mentor for me today. So she's a very accomplished scientist at Baylor.

00:38:25.010 - 00:38:39.680

And she was really pivotal in my—in this—in my early sort of establishment as an independent researcher. And how would you describe your career?

00:38:43.430 - 00:39:00.810

As in what I do now? And then I also—yes. And then, I also saw in—I think Dr. Chao had forwarded me the alumni email featuring you, and you describe the three pillars of medicine, research, advocacy.

00:39:01.080 - 00:39:17.610

So maybe like speaking to that, or, in general, how would you describe your career to like anyone who doesn't already know you? Okay. Right. So—so yeah, I mean, I think what motivates my work in my career now

00:39:17.610 - 00:39:33.440

is, is thinking about what we need to do to help patients. And that's why I think of my career in terms of three pillars in terms of research, patient care, and advocacy.

00:39:34.480 - 00:39:48.700

So obviously, patient care is the easiest one to describe in that you need to keep up your medical knowledge to be able to know how to take care of patients and to have enough knowledge to know where

00:39:48.780 - 00:40:07.010

their problems may be coming from and how to treat those things. So I really enjoy patient care and I really enjoy the opportunity to interact with patients and families and to help people

00:40:07.660 - 00:40:22.240

in very concrete ways. So I do that about four weeks a year now- I spend four weeks a year seeing patients. So research is—is

00:40:23.540 - 00:40:41.040

critical for the medical enterprise, because there's still so many illnesses out there that we don't understand. And many illnesses for which we don't have good treatments. And also, I mean,

00:40:41.040 - 00:41:01.890

there's—some of maybe the most heartbreaking cases that I've taken care of as a physician have been children who suddenly developed a problem like intractable seizures, and for which we never find a cause. So it's unclear whether that's a genetic

00:41:02.420 - 00:41:19.180

basis or more likely—because now we have the capacity to really survey the whole genome. Sometimes you can actually say it's not likely to be a genetic cause. And-- there may be environmental toxins or—or occult

00:41:20.120 - 00:41:32.420

infections that we still don't know about. And it's really—it's really, very frustrating and sad to take care of a patient and not be able to provide an answer

00:41:32.420 - 00:41:49.840

for what's causing the problem. And really, that's where medical research comes in to say that, you know, there's still these frontiers of knowledge that we don't know I think that having a

00:41:49.840 - 00:42:07.980

research endeavor to try to answer those questions really gives people a lot of hope that, you know, that there is meaning to people's lives and that there is the chance for improvement over time. So that—so

00:42:09.270 - 00:42:25.700

I feel very fortunate to be able to participate in research and to contribute in those ways. And it's—it's really …and I really mean privilege when I say that is that research is a huge, hugely

00:42:26.320 - 00:42:42.840

expensive and it takes a huge amount of productive time that could otherwise be spent, you know, treating actual patients or doing other good things for people. And so it is a luxury to be able to have the space and

00:42:42.840 - 00:42:59.150

time and—and resources to do research. So I spend actually the majority of—the vast majority of my time and effort now doing research and that includes supervising a group of ten people who work in the lab

00:42:59.590 - 00:43:14.940

these five graduate students, some technicians and a couple of postdoc associates. That whole team is working towards common goals of understanding how infections influence bone marrow function,

00:43:14.940 - 00:43:33.320

and we work all together. So I spend a lot of time discussing research results with my trainees in my lab, reading papers, discussing the latest scientific knowledge, and writing papers to report our results and

00:43:33.340 - 00:43:52.250

writing grants to get more funding to do our research. That is really the vast majority of my time that I do that. I do a little bit of administrative work as well to support research efforts in general by the Department of Pediatrics at Texas Children's and Baylor.

00:43:54.190 - 00:44:10.450

So then the third pillar is advocacy and I became involved in advocacy, I would say as I mentioned, I was always involved in student government when I was growing up. There's always been a part of me that I would describe as like, if you see a

00:44:10.520 - 00:44:27.390

problem, then you try to be part of the solution. And—and so when I was a resident in 2003 to 2006, I, that was my first time practicing medicine as a

00:44:27.740 - 00:44:45.900

physician, and I could see lots of shortcomings in our medical system, and just systemic problems that provided really huge barriers to the patients getting the care they needed.

00:44:48.030 - 00:45:05.040

And so that included things like, the system that we have, which makes insurance a critical determinant of what kind of care patients get. So, for example, I took care of a six year old boy at Ben

00:45:05.040 - 00:45:19.470

Taub when I was a resident who came in because his eyes were crossed, and he was having a headache and throwing up, and it turns out he had a brain tumor, a large brain tumor that was sitting at the base

00:45:19.470 - 00:45:32.520

of his brain, and it was pushing on the nerve that controlled his eyes. And it was increasing the pressure in his head to make him have a headache and feel like vomiting. It was really a terrible situation.

00:45:34.780 - 00:45:49.030

And then it turns out that Ben Taub there was no pediatric oncology services. So that's a county health department hospital that's supposed to provide a

00:45:49.030 - 00:46:04.310

safety net for anybody who lives in Houston, but they don't necessarily—it's a system that is overburdened by the population that it's meant to serve. And there's not enough resources there and they

00:46:04.400 - 00:46:22.060

don't have all the specialists that might be standard in a pediatric specialty hospital like Texas Children's. So—and then it turns out that that patient was not documented and didn't have any insurance. And so it

00:46:22.060 - 00:46:41.380

became a real difficulty getting that patient to be transferred somewhere that he can get care for his huge brain tumor. And it was a very—it—that situation really hit—hit me hard because I felt,

00:46:42.220 - 00:47:01.790

“Wow, just because of the circumstances into which this child was born, he can't get the care he needs for the brain tumor he has through no fault of his own.” Many of us at the time that wrote letters to various people

00:47:01.790 - 00:47:20.240

to ask for charity care for that boy, and ultimately he did receive that. But I thought, “boy, it's really sad when somebody's life depends on whether or not somebody's willing to write

00:47:20.830 - 00:47:36.250

a letter and persuade somebody in power to sort of release the resources for, for what he needs.” So I really—I really believe that healthcare is a right and

00:47:38.570 - 00:47:49.990

those kinds of experiences led me to get involved in founding a group that's called Doctors for Change. And that's a community organization. It's a 501 nonprofit that we started

00:47:50.640 - 00:48:10.890

in officially in 2007, although it was in conception and development well before that. That group is still going strong and is a group of health care providers, not just doctors, but nurses and social workers and

00:48:11.500 - 00:48:29.640

speech therapists and optometrists who care about advocating for the needs of their patients. We do so in the form of educational forums for providers to say, “Hey, there's all these

00:48:29.970 - 00:48:39.310

wonderful resources in Houston that are available to support patients. And here's a great way to get in contact with those resources to help your patients out.”

00:48:39.980 - 00:48:56.610

For example, if you needed to find a free or sliding scale dentist clinic for your patients, or how do you— how do you find low cost prescription drugs for your patients? We try to provide those resources and

00:48:56.610 - 00:49:10.300

information about them and also bring people together to come up with solutions to help patients to bridge these gaps. We also do legislative advocacy.

00:49:10.300 - 00:49:26.310

So we travel to Austin and we talked to state and local representatives about laws that may affect the care of patients and promoting laws that help patients to access care or to be safe.

00:49:26.920 - 00:49:44.500

And—and then we do some projects as well. So, for example, we do we have a CME education about human trafficking, and we try to educate emergency room physicians

00:49:44.500 - 00:50:04.350

about what human trafficking is and how to identify it and how to refer patients to get the help they need. So anyway, so I think of that as the third pillar because we can all help one patient at a time but if no one

00:50:04.350 - 00:50:21.190

says anything about the system in which we're caring for patients then there continues to be systemic problems that really stand in the way of good healthcare for people. So I try to be a voice for that.

00:50:23.490 - 00:50:39.560

Um, what have been like the major challenges the org—that Doctors for Change has faced? Right. So one of the one of our favorite examples is pretty early on after we were formed in 2007 or so, at that time, the wait time to get an

00:50:39.600 - 00:50:51.830

ultrasound at Ben Taub was nine months. So it was nine months between when a doctor ordered—said, “You should get an ultrasound because you have a mass in your abdomen.

00:50:51.890 - 00:51:09.460

And we should do some imaging and figure out what that is,” before the patient could be scheduled to get the study done. And that system just was not working at all because obviously nine months is really too long to wait for—for getting a study like that.

00:51:09.500 - 00:51:24.570

And also, you know, patients would get scheduled nine months out, and then most of them would not show up at the appointment because they had already forgotten by that time or it was a moot point. And so then they were taking up spaces in

00:51:24.570 - 00:51:37.560

the schedule that they didn't even end up using. So it was just a system that was not working for anyone, including the patients, the doctors, the hospital system, the ultrasound technicians.

00:51:40.100 - 00:51:53.340

So—so what Doctors for Change did was to bring this to sort of public attention. I think the hospital district already knew that the problem existed, but when a group of 50 physicians

00:51:54.890 - 00:52:11.330

showed up with a letter and with, you know, loud voices, they thought, “well, we better do something faster about this,” and so they—they did immediately change the system to outsource some of the studies to private

00:52:12.400 - 00:52:25.360

ultrasound clinics. They inc- increased the number of ultrasound technicians they were training to do the job. They actually expanded the building

00:52:25.510 - 00:52:39.200

that they were using to house ultrasound machinery to take care of patients. And they changed the whole way that the scheduling system was done so that patients were scheduled out to two weeks and no further

00:52:39.880 - 00:52:55.780

and so people were getting their studies within two weeks. And, so it really improved the system all the way around for everybody, and most importantly, the patients. And so that was a really great example of,

00:52:56.710 - 00:53:13.950

of something that we've done. And more recently, have been working as I said on human trafficking and we've had a number of good wins in terms of helping to

00:53:13.950 - 00:53:29.550

write and to promote bills in the Texas Legislature to support, for example, expanding Medicaid access to postpartum women from what used to be six weeks to one year postpartum.

00:53:32.080 - 00:53:48.940

Part of what really motivated that change was the knowledge that 30% of postpartum women can suffer from postpartum depression, and that's a very important diagnosis that needs to be addressed.

00:53:51.930 - 00:54:06.060

We were losing a lot of the care of postpartum women suffering from depression because of that six week limit on postpartum care. So that's another example of something that we've contributed

00:54:12.120 - 00:54:25.430

to. And do you have any advice for physicians who want to advocate for their patients in terms of like balancing providing care while also being an advocate for patients? Right. So that's a great question.

00:54:25.430 - 00:54:40.270

I think that in the past, I mean, 20 years ago, sometimes it was hard to You felt like okay, you're doing advocacy, but you're doing that in your spare time. And you're doing it off hours.

00:54:43.600 - 00:55:02.010

There was a little bit of a dichotomy between advocates who sometimes seem like rebels or rabble rousers, and physicians who are really taught to respect hierarchies and to act within the boundaries of, of the rules.

00:55:03.420 - 00:55:17.300

And so sometimes it seems like a dichotomy to do both. But, you know, I think that has eased over the years and now there's many more formal ways to incorporate advocacy into your career as a physician.

00:55:17.910 - 00:55:33.170

And in fact, some residency programs have advocacy tracks in their residency so that you can get training in advocacy and really incorporate it into your career. So, for example, I'm a pediatrician and the American

00:55:33.170 - 00:55:51.010

Academy of Pediatrics has—has an advocacy and policy internship. They have a whole subgroup of interested physicians that you can get— you can get involved with and then rise up to become a national leader.

00:55:52.210 - 00:56:10.730

And Texas Children's and Baylor pediatrics has faculty members whose primary research interest is in advocacy and policy. So there's definitely now ways to build your career with advocacy

00:56:10.900 - 00:56:27.400

and policy making as a central part of what you do. So I can think of several people for whom, you know, they see patients a certain percentage of their time, but then their, their other efforts, their academic efforts are

00:56:27.400 - 00:56:42.580

directed towards developing policy and then studying how policy changes impact patient outcomes. And that's very important work and can have

00:56:42.580 - 00:56:56.370

huge impact on patients. So I think certainly, there's great ways to do that. Some people go and get an MPH that can also help in that realm, but that's

00:56:57.090 - 00:57:09.570

not necessary. So, I think, I guess my advice to somebody who's starting out like yourself, for example, is to find role models when you're in medical school of

00:57:09.570 - 00:57:28.470

people who incorporate advocacy into their career and see how they do it, and get advice about how to— how to follow that path. And do you ever see identity intersecting with your

00:57:30.900 - 00:57:51.880

work? Yeah, I would say, I think all the time. I think it's impossible to separate identity from work. And yeah, I think that I've been lucky that I've always worked in an area where

00:57:51.920 - 00:58:13.580

there are a lot of Asians I think in science and medicine, and I think for the most part Asians are accepted and respected. That being said, I mean I think that always working

00:58:16.730 - 00:58:33.960

hard and doing a good job are the best sort of defense against any kind of prejudice. So, I think that's always been a guiding principle for me.

00:58:37.190 - 00:58:53.070

I would—I would say probably gender discrimination has been more important in my life than racial discrimination. I've very, very frequently been the only woman in the room or one of very few

00:58:53.070 - 00:59:08.720

women and continue to be in certain aspects of my career. And that's something that I think I've been comfortable with since—since the seventh grade, when I was just the only girl in my advanced math class or

00:59:09.270 - 00:59:22.050

things like that. So it's just something that I've become used to. To some extent you develop a thick skin about it. And I kind of don't worry about what other people think or what they say.

00:59:25.040 - 00:59:44.860

But—but yeah, no I don’t think that I think my sense of identity is probably always evolving, and always changing. But that, I think that that's always difficult in—when, when

00:59:46.460 - 01:00:04.100

the going is rough or you know, when you experience failures in work. That's when you tend—that's certainly when I tend to have more of an identity crisis. So I'll tell you that, shortly after I became a faculty member and set up my own lab.

01:00:05.220 - 01:00:20.670

I went through a pretty big period of failures, where I applied for grant after grant, and I was getting lots of rejections. And it frankly, made me doubt whether I had a viable research career.

01:00:21.730 - 01:00:36.640

Because you really can't do research if you can't get grants. And I thought, “well, I don't know if this is gonna work out because so far I haven't gotten a big grant. And there, there's— nobody's willing to

01:00:37.120 - 01:00:52.360

keep funding my lab, then I won't have a lab.” And so I would say I went through an identity crisis at that point, because I had spent years and years and years training to be a scientist and to be a researcher, and

01:00:53.650 - 01:01:09.400

I had defined myself as such and then I faced the idea that maybe that wasn't going to work out. That was very difficult. And I think I don't

01:01:09.400 - 01:01:18.930

know if I have any good advice about that other than I basically just put one foot in front of the other and kept going through that period of time. And thankfully it worked out.

01:01:19.510 - 01:01:34.000

Thankfully, I just I kept trying. And ultimately, I was successful in getting the grants that I needed to have my lab. But I’m sure, just with anybody who's doing a challenging job there, there continue to be failures.

01:01:38.690 - 01:01:53.890

I guess it's just about having faith in oneself that ultimately it'll work out. But I think maybe the most important thing was just not giving up and to not let that sense of failure detract

01:01:54.060 - 01:02:13.000

from the effort, but apply to keep—to keep going. But I could have easily not been successful and had to redefine what myself as a physician who mostly does patient care and advocacy, and that's that's also valuable.

01:02:14.270 - 01:02:28.670

So I probably would have shifted my identity accordingly, if that's what had happened. And what would you say are your proudest moments, or I guess, promise achievements that you've had in your career so far?

01:02:30.200 - 01:02:43.380

Well, I think probably, it’s very much related to what I just said. But sort of the, the lower the low, the higher the high, right, so, so I was in a really low place when I was having so many failures in getting

01:02:43.420 - 01:02:58.290

research grants. But then when I finally got two big research grants in the same year, then I—that was probably my proudest moment and probably the most significant in terms of my career. So

01:03:00.220 - 01:03:17.400

yeah, I think that that's a critical thing for me and allows me to have a big lab of people on and make some progress with my research. But yeah,

01:03:17.890 - 01:03:34.050

I'm really proud I think when I work in teams and see the benefits of cooperative efforts, and I'm really proud when I see people that I'm teaching or people that are coming

01:03:34.090 - 01:03:53.020

after me, that maybe have been helped by my mentorship or inspired by my leadership. That really applies in all my three pillars of work that I do. It really makes me happy when I see

01:03:53.800 - 01:04:10.200

people coming after me having success in helping patients and advocating for them and making scientific discoveries. And then shifting to family—the topic of family.

01:04:11.180 - 01:04:22.330

So how did you meet your husband? My husband is Antony Rodriguez. He's a researcher at Baylor, but I actually met him because we were part of the same running group.

01:04:24.430 - 01:04:39.320

There was a Monday night running group, and I would go running and he was part of that group. So that's how I met him. But I actually had heard his name before I met him. So he wasn't totally a stranger,

01:04:40.260 - 01:04:55.100

but that's how I met him. Um, and what are some activities—you have one child? Yes. Okay. Um, what are some activities you like to do with your child as a family?

01:04:55.760 - 01:05:09.860

Right. So I think because I met my husband when we were running, outdoor activities and athletics, things like that are really a big part of our life. We like to go biking together now, running or walking in

01:05:09.860 - 01:05:18.010

the Arboretum--just being outside in nature. Something that we like to do. We like spending time in the pool.

01:05:23.670 - 01:05:37.730

Right now my daughter is six and she really loves Star Wars. So we watch Star Wars together. We watch Clone Wars. And also, we love good food and eating and cooking.

01:05:38.840 - 01:05:58.590

So we cook together as a family and eat so that’s—I would say that's another big aspect of our lives. And are there any cultural values that you want to pass on to your daughter? Or how do you navigate this space of—I assume it's a multicultural household .

01:05:58.620 - 01:06:13.070

So how do you determine, like, I don’t know if “determine” is the, is the right word, but how do you foster a sense of like, having both cultures impact her life? That's right. My husband’s family is Costa Rican, so it's definitely a

01:06:13.390 - 01:06:27.740

multicultural family. You know, I actually, I spoke Chinese only to my daughter before she was two years old. So I tried to pass on some Mandarin to her by passive transfer.

01:06:28.370 - 01:06:44.540

I'm not sure how much of it stuck because then as soon as she started going to daycare, then, she—she wasn't really accepting of Chinese. And she even said to me one time she said, “Mommy, speak normal.” Like I'm speaking normally but

01:06:45.570 - 01:07:00.130

so she doesn't—she doesn't really even understand me anymore when I speak Chinese, sadly. But hopefully she'll come back to appreciate it one day. But I do think that she does identify with

01:07:00.240 - 01:07:18.130

Chinese and Costa Rican culture and it's been important for both me and my husband to instill a sense of pride for her in both of those cultures. Certainly we eat a lot of Chinese food and we go to Chinatown and get food,

01:07:19.260 - 01:07:32.820

and—and we have Chinese, you know we celebrate Chinese New Year and we celebrate the Moon Festival. And I try to have some books around that explain Chinese traditions.

01:07:34.180 - 01:07:49.510

I also try to tell my daughter a lot of stories about my parents and my grandparents and our family. The same thing goes for my husband. In fact recently, my

01:07:49.510 - 01:08:08.360

daughter was interested in learning more about ancient Chinese history. And so we were learning about the Tang Dynasty or—or the you know the the Chinese tombs in Xi’an.

01:08:10.500 - 01:08:24.980

There are always good opportunities for cultural exploration. So we'll see, I don't know if she'll end up learning very much Chinese. Hopefully one day she'll become more interested.

01:08:27.650 - 01:08:43.510

Yeah. And then how would you describe how the Asian American communities have changed over time in Houston? Oh, wow. You know, when I was a kid, there were—there were a fair number of Chinese.

01:08:44.050 - 01:09:00.320

And actually, you know, I told you, my dad taught at U of H and there was actually a Chinese faculty group of University of Houston Chinese faculty and we would sometimes get together with them and have meals and I would get to know the other kids of U of H faculty.

01:09:00.860 - 01:09:13.630

That was one of the biggest ways that I interacted with other Chinese kids when I was growing up. But, I would say that the diversity of Asians in Houston was not that great.

01:09:13.820 - 01:09:25.210

There weren't very many Vietnamese. There weren't very many Japanese. There weren't many Koreans. Maybe there was mostly Chinese and Indian groups.

01:09:30.710 - 01:09:42.020

So I feel like now there's just so much more Asian diversity. Obviously, we have a huge Vietnamese community and other nationalities.

01:09:42.130 - 01:09:58.580

So there's just a lot more and then, you know, when I was growing up, there was the old-old Chinatown in downtown and there was maybe three restaurants and one grocery store. And now obviously, there's like a whole city of

01:09:59.360 - 01:10:19.260

Chinatown, out to the west. So the variety and the scale of Asian culture in Houston has really increased tremendously. And it's clo—I mean, I think when my parents first

01:10:19.760 - 01:10:37.000

moved here it was really pretty hard for them to get Chinese food ingredients, Chinese vegetables and things like that. And now it's not hard at all. So, that's great. Um, and then

01:10:37.000 - 01:10:48.560

kind of bringing it to where we are today in time. How has the pandemic affected your life in how you like, do you still go in to do research and how has it impacted like your research questions?

01:10:50.180 - 01:11:07.870

Um, yeah, those are great questions. So our lab has basically been shut down, unfortunately, because of the shutdown, and so we've—we've actually lost a lot of our momentum in terms of our research, and

01:11:07.870 - 01:11:24.670

we'll have to work starting now on starting to build it back up again. We've tried to remain productive during the shutdown period by focusing on writing papers and reporting our results and writing reviews

01:11:24.670 - 01:11:39.080

about the area we researched and working on some grant applications. So we've—we've sort of made the best of it. But, you know, one of the best things about research is the interactions between researchers,

01:11:39.970 - 01:11:55.760

and not being able to be together at work has really put a damper on that. We have daily Zoom meetings and—and so we try to recreate that closeness but it's certainly not as much fun I think, when we can't be

01:11:55.760 - 01:12:11.820

all together. Yeah, in the meantime, since I am an infectious disease physician, I have increased the amount of time I've spent every day in addressing COVID-related questions, and I have been, for

01:12:11.820 - 01:12:30.740

example, I've been writing three times a week newsletter for the Texas Children's community to keep everybody up to date about news related to COVID, including what's our testing status?

01:12:31.810 - 01:12:51.400

How many tests we have available? Things like that. So I've actually been spending three or four hours a day, organizing information for people, answering questions for people in helping the

01:12:51.480 - 01:13:08.360

hospital to plan its response to COVID. Like, when do we start letting patients back in for elective surgeries? When do we open our clinics back up? When we do open our clinics back up, how are they going to look

01:13:08.360 - 01:13:20.890

different from how they looked before? And who are we going to test for COVID? And how do we prioritize who gets a test because the testing is not unlimited?

01:13:25.420 - 01:13:42.080

Since I do research about how infections affect blood production, that is a relevant question for COVID. So, you know, we will probably—one of my future grant applications will probably incorporate some COVID research into

01:13:47.690 - 01:14:04.060

it. In terms of advocacy, what kind of advocacy efforts do you think will come out of the pandemic? I didn't mention that I've also done some advocacy work during this, which is that over the past week

01:14:04.090 - 01:14:20.950

or two I've writ—co-authored with some other people, a couple of op eds for the newspaper to talk about the need for increased testing and contact tracing in our community to enable the society to reopen and

01:14:21.660 - 01:14:40.840

function economically again. So we’re hoping to promote those efforts in our state. I'm hoping those will get published soon. It's an important thing to have the voice of people who work

01:14:40.840 - 01:14:51.990

on the frontlines and people who understand the problem to help inform policy decisions. And I think that everybody recognizes

01:14:56.100 - 01:15:09.620

that. Doctors for Change has been involved at the local level in Houston to try to address some of those questions and particularly, you've probably seen in the news that there are certain communities that are hit harder by COVID than others.

01:15:10.060 - 01:15:28.970

In particular, minority and traditionally underserved communities like the African American community have been really hit hard by COVID. And so, Mayor Turner in Houston has convened a task force to address the needs of

01:15:29.120 - 01:15:43.640

the medically underserved communities and medically vulnerable communities in Houston, and how to address their needs. Because—and that's especially important right now, because with the patchwork of testing that's

01:15:43.640 - 01:15:58.950

been available in the city, it's not really coming through the government as it typically does. Every hospital is coming up with their own testing, and that tends to favor people with insurance. So we have to

01:15:58.950 - 01:16:17.800

do everything we can to make sure that people without insurance or people who fall outside of traditional forms of getting healthcare are not neglected as those are areas in which the infection could really take hold and really get out of control.

01:16:17.870 - 01:16:34.440

So, the prison population and the undocumented population and poorer neighborhoods or areas where there's more unemployment, those areas are going to

01:16:34.440 - 01:16:47.280

really be—are already very vulnerable. So there's a task force that Doctors for Change is part of to try to figure out how to address those needs and to make sure that those needs are not forgotten.

01:16:50.600 - 01:17:05.280

I try to remind everybody that, you know, we all depend on one another. And if there's a huge population of undocumented people or prisoners or unemployed people who get

01:17:05.520 - 01:17:26.360

the infection that's a threat to all of us and to the economy. And so it's really in everyone's best interest to make sure that all segments of the community are cared for. And with your three pillars, and especially during these times, how do you balance work

01:17:26.360 - 01:17:45.040

and life? Yeah, it's a constant—it's a constant effort, and, and it's a constant recalibration. I kind of get out of balance all the time and try to get back into balance.

01:17:45.350 - 01:17:59.650

And I think that's something I've learned over time is that you know, I went to workshops and—and panel discussions on work life balance when I was all the way through college and med school and, you know, I guess I thought maybe at

01:17:59.650 - 01:18:07.090

one point that you would figure it out and then you'd be set. But then I realized that you never figure it out. You just constantly try to recalibrate.

01:18:09.090 - 01:18:24.030

But to me, it's not so much work-life as self-care. How much do I have to give to others versus how much do I need to spend time taking care of myself. That's sort of the balance that I try to

01:18:24.030 - 01:18:35.130

strike because certainly I've gotten to the point where I've sort of given everything of myself and I'm exhausted and I have, then I don't function very well. And so I have to then pull back and say, “Okay,

01:18:35.640 - 01:18:51.670

well, I can work this many hours and I can do this many things for—towards these larger goals, but that I need to spend this time sleeping or eating or doing something fun or exercising.” I definitely

01:18:51.730 - 01:19:04.690

exercise regularly. I jog most days. I get up in the morning, I go for a brief jog, and sometimes it's only a 15 minute jog, but it's something and it helps me to stay feeling positive

01:19:04.810 - 01:19:19.030

and energetic. So that helps me a lot. And I do yoga. And I definitely, on the weekends I spend more, more time just relaxing with family, or

01:19:19.030 - 01:19:38.880

doing fun things than I do working. So, yeah. Um, and my last question is, how would you identify yourself? Um, that's a totally open-ended question?

01:19:41.630 - 01:20:06.030

I would identify myself as a Chinese-American physician scientist who's also a wife and a mom and an advocate. Great, thank you so much for allowing us to interview for the archive. Is there anything—anything

01:20:06.030 - 01:20:25.420

else you wanted to talk about that we didn't ask—that I didn't ask during the interview? Since we’re talking about heritage, I wanted just to convey that I feel very grateful for the life that I’m able to have.

01:20:26.250 - 01:20:43.430

Because when I think about my parents’ lives, my grandparents’ life, they lived through a lot harder times than I’ve had to live through in terms of living through world wars and times of hunger, times of economic hardship.

01:20:45.020 - 01:21:03.620

And, having to overcome obstacles with a lot fewer resources than I’ve been able to have. So I’m very appreciative of the opportunities that I’ve had in my life and of being able to

01:21:03.690 - 01:21:18.340

have that perspective of the kinds of challenges that my parents faced in immigrating here to the United States and assimilating to a different culture without really having the resources to start with.

01:21:20.510 - 01:21:30.010

I think that having that perspective has been super valuable to me. Great, thank you so much, Dr. King.