CNIW Summer Student Fiona Bian Shares Her Research Findings on Anti-Chinese Discrimination at International Public Health Conference

The American Public Health Association (APHA) 2022 Annual Conference and Expo was held from Nov 6-9, 2022 in Boston, USA. This exciting event brought together thousands of presenters and attendees researching in the field of public health to celebrate the association’s 150th anniversary while promoting professional development and collaboration.

CNIW Summer Student, Fiona Bian, had two of her abstracts accepted to the highly selective APHA 2022 Annual Conference back in July and prepared with CNIW over the couple months. Her abstract titled “Assessing Barriers Preventing Chinese Canadian Immigrants from Reporting Hate Crimes and Discrimination During the COVID-19 Pandemic” was selected for an oral presentation. As a CNIW summer student, she collaborated with various others to create an organised slideshow presentation that would effectively communicate her findings. She presented on Nov 9th in the program session titled “Epidemiology and Discrimination”. A video of her presentation can be found below:

Her second abstract titled “Changes in North American Chinese’s Behaviour Amidst the Second Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic Compared to the First Wave” was selected for a poster presentation. She presented on Nov 7th in the program titled “COVID-19 Poster Session III” and a picture of her poster can be found below:

APHA’s 2022 Annual Conference and Expo was a fantastic way for Fiona to share her work as a student volunteer at CNIW with many others who are interested and researching in the field of public health. She formed many connections with other presenters and enjoyed her time connecting with exhibitors at the Expo and listening in on other oral and poster presentations.

Fiona is a Grade 12 High School student studying at Branksome Hall School in Toronto. This project is partially supported by the New Frontiers Research Fund through the Canadian Institute of Health Research [NFRF-2019-00012] awarded to Dr. Peizhong Peter Wang https://www.mun.ca/medicine/faculty-and-staff-resources/faculty-a-z/wang-peizhong-peter.php and Dr. Lixia Yang https://www.torontomu.ca/psychology/about-us/our-people/faculty/lixia-yang/.

Contributors of this work include: Fiona Bian, Ying Cao，Nan Lei, Suky Zheng, Kashish Jafri， Mahshid Bolourchian，Stephanie Sheng, Lixia Yang, and Peizhong Peter Wang

CNIW wishes to acknowledge the support of our primary collaborating organization,  Confederation of Chinese Alumni Associations （CCAA), https://ccaacc.org/ other organizations.