By Xenia Shih Bion, California Health Care Foundation, February 27, 2020
Across the country, a growing number of hospitals are offering spiritual care services to patients and families. At some medical centers, patients can request a visit from a chaplain, join a multifaith ceremony in the hospital chapel, or receive a referral to faith-based community organizations. But only one hospital in the US facilitates patient requests for visits from a Hmong shaman, or txiv neeb — a traditional spiritual healer who can perform nine healing ceremonies approved by the hospital right in the patient’s room.
At Mercy Medical Center (a Dignity Health hospital) in Merced, California, the nation’s only hospital-based Hmong shaman certification program bridges Eastern and Western medicine to meet immigrants’ health needs. The program was created to provide culturally and linguistically competent care for Merced’s Hmong population. Any patient at Mercy can request these shaman services.
Merced County in California’s Central Valley is home to 275,000 residents, including about 5,700 Hmong, an ethnic group from Laos recruited by the CIA during the Vietnam War to fight alongside US troops in Southeast Asia. After Laos fell to the communists in 1975, tens of thousands of Hmong civilians were declared enemies of the state by the new government. Those civilians fled to Thailand, where they stayed in overcrowded refugee camps until American human rights activists pressured the US government to create a resettlement program for the Hmong.
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