Minnesota LEND Fellow Engages with Local Hmong Community

May 5, 2022

MNLEND Fellow Julie Li Yang is wearing a facemask and standing next to a table with Help Me Grow children's books, toys, and paper resources.

This spring, MNLEND Community Fellow Julie Li Yang is engaging in outreach activities to promote Help Me Grow resources with the Hmong community in the Twin Cities and surrounding area. Yang is mentored by Dr. Jennifer Hall-Lande in the Minnesota LEND program at the Institute on Community Integration (ICI) at the University of Minnesota. By promoting early monitoring and early developmental screening resources at tabling events and through social media, Yang found that parents are often reluctant to discuss early intervention services due to the shame and stigma surrounding autism diagnosis, specific to the Hmong community.

Some common themes include medical mistrust/discrimination in health care; fear an “official” autism diagnosis will exclude a child from achieving optimal academic goals (low expectations, classroom segregation); rejection from familial clan; loss of childcare provided by grandparents/family caregivers; and general fear of community mistreatment, discrimination, and social isolation. Yang is addressing these issues through the power of storytelling by sharing her experiences with early intervention services for her children and how it led to discovering her children’s learning needs. Yang continues to focus her outreach on empowering parents and caregivers to seek early intervention resources, normalize neurodiversity, and foster advocacy.