Find Inspiration and Empowerment in Sukhjeen Kaur’s Journey of Overcoming Chronic Illness and Starting Chronically Brown
Welcome to our latest blog post! Are you ready to dive deep into a topic that affects millions of people but is often overlooked and misunderstood? In this post, we’re talking all things chronic illness and the lack of diversity in health research. We know, it might sound heavy, but trust us, this is an episode you won’t want to miss.
Imagine living with a chronic illness and feeling like you’re all alone in your struggles, like no one truly understands what you’re going through.
That’s the reality for many individuals living with chronic illnesses, especially those from South Asian communities. But, what if we told you that there’s an advocate out there who’s working tirelessly to change that? Introducing Sukhjeen Kaur, the founder of Chronically Brown.
Sukhjeen knows firsthand the challenges of living with chronic illness. Her personal experience with Rheumatoid Arthritis led her to start Chronically Brown, an organization that’s working towards raising awareness and support for individuals living with chronic illnesses from South Asian communities. In this episode, Sukhjeen will share her inspiring story of overcoming obstacles and biases in the healthcare industry to make a difference in the lives of many.
Joining Sukhjeen in this illuminating conversation is BWH member Ameek Bindra. For those of you who may not know, BWH is Brown Women Health, a platform where we talk about South Asian health disparities and highlight health professionals and advocates making a difference. In this conversation, Sukhjeen and Ameek delve into topics such as cultural competency, the Miss Bibi Syndrome and more. It’s an eye-opening conversation that will leave you with a newfound understanding and appreciation of the importance of cultural competency and representation in healthcare.
Don’t miss out on this inspiring episode, available now on Apple and Spotify. And for your convenience, we’ve included the transcription of the conversation below. So sit back, relax, and get ready to be inspired and informed.
What You Didn’t Know About Chronic Illness — Transcript Excerpt
Ameek: Hi everyone, my name is Ameek, and today we’re going to have a very special live with Sukhjeen who is from the UK, so across the pond. And we will be talking about chronic illness as well as just some stuff that we actually covered in our podcast. So, I will wait for her to join the live, and then we can have a really awesome discussion on chronic illness as well as just the health care system in the UK. So, I will wait for her, but in the meantime make sure to go check out our podcast. We have it released on Spotify, Apple Music, and also just Anchor, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, literally everywhere. So make sure to go check out the podcast, especially your last one about chronic illness, and this is part one of two with Sukhjeen. But we’ll wait for her to join.
Ameek: Hey Sukhjeen, thank you for being on our live today. And so, the first question is just like, can you just introduce yourself? You have Chronically Brown, an amazing page. So, yeah, what got you to start it and all of that?
Sukhjeen: Yeah, so I founded Chronically Brown and the main reason why I found it was, I mean, I started the whole page because of my condition with rheumatoid arthritis, and I just wanted to meet other people with the condition. And once I realized, you know, talking to people that like focused on their arthritis charities and stuff, and once I realized that they were just mainly white women and I couldn’t really connect with them, especially as well with the age as well. So, I was at university, I was 20, it was a lot of things that I just didn’t connect with, even though they had the same condition as me. So, I started speaking out about it, and then after a while, I got a few comments and messages from people who said the exact same thing as me and that is an intersection that not a lot of people really pay attention to or really care about. And I think I was just sick of hearing that after a while, and I thought maybe I’ll just try and do something about it. So I carried it on as an Instagram page now we’re a non-profit. We’ve got like a small team of people helping out now and yeah, hopefully one day a charity if things go well.
Ameek: That’s awesome. So what are some of the things that y’all do? I know you’ve expanded from Instagram page and have like a series of workshops as well. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
Sukhjeen: Yeah, so the things that we have started are the workshops. The workshops are like aimed at any South Asian community. We’re starting with the elders in the South Asian community and trying to educate them about disability, what it means, the different kinds of disabilities that you can come across, and also just trying to get them. We did like a bit of a myth-busting component as well which didn’t turn out very well to start with. And the elders kind of just went “Oh, I believe every disabled person can’t walk or they can’t do this and they can’t do that.” And that didn’t start off the best but as the workshop went on, it did go back, it did get better. That was the whole purpose of it was to change their perceptions and the myths that are surrounding disability and to try and get them as well because some of the people in the group, I won’t go into specifics but they will also disable themselves but they never considered themselves disabled and it was kind of telling them what it was if you do start to consider yourself as disabled how that would change the perceptions within the community and how that would actually impact and help like grandkids for example. Yeah just stuff like that. It’s been going well, we’ve got a few others planned that are hopefully going to be done in July.
— end of excerpt —
Thank You
We hope you enjoyed the conversation with Sukhjeen Kaur, the founder of Chronically Brown. Sukhjeen’s story is an inspiration to many, and her work towards creating a more inclusive and diverse health care system is truly admirable. The issues of chronic illness and the lack of diversity in health research are important ones that need to be discussed more, and we are grateful to Sukhjeen for shedding light on them.
We hope that the transcript of this excerpt of the podcast was helpful and insightful. If you would like the full transcript or have any suggestions, please feel free to fill out our suggestion box form. We value your feedback and are always looking for ways to improve our content. Don’t forget to tune in to our podcast, available on Apple and Spotify, for more discussions on South Asian health disparities and the individuals making a difference.
