David Yu is an optimistic person by nature, but as the Trump administration targets diversity initiatives — the core of his work — he’s digging deep to maintain a positive outlook. Yu began his career as one of the few male nurses in South Korea, and for 15 years has worked in ICUs from Seoul to Philadelphia. As a clinician, he’s witnessed discrimination against patients. As a patient himself, and a gay man, he’s been told multiple times by doctors that they “aren’t the right provider” for simple prescriptions like PrEP, which protects against HIV. These encounters always left Yu wondering if it was a lack of knowledge or a biased belief system that stopped doctors from providing care.
Those questions ultimately led Yu to pursue his Ph.D. in nursing, where he wrote his dissertation on the structural factors involved in creating culturally competent and LGBTQ+ inclusive health care. These days, he splits his time between the ICU and his postdoctoral studies, continuing to focus on health equity in hospital systems. He’s hopeful that in the future, more systems will collect comprehensive data on sexual orientation and gender identity (respectfully, he emphasized), as it’s critical for understanding and improving patient experiences.
In the meantime, Yu isn’t letting the federal crackdown on DEI research stop him. “Not getting federal funding is not equal to the degree of importance of my work,” he said. “It’s all about serving humanity and meeting human needs. … And I have to believe there is still humanity in our society.”
— Theresa Gaffney
