Thao Nguyen, Director of Outreach

Thao Nguyen is the Director of Outreach for Health and Reproductive Rights. She oversees the outreach efforts for the Center's work on health care, reproductive rights, and judicial nominations. She helped manage the successful health campaign Being A Woman Is Not A Pre-Existing Condition and is the campaign director of This Is Personal. Previously, Ms. Nguyen managed the policy and advocacy work at different HIV/AIDS and environmental organizations. She received her undergraduate degree in English from the University of California, Irvine and a graduate degree in Human Rights Law from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London where she wrote her honors thesis examining the legal advances in protecting women against violence during conflict situations.

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My Take

To the Moms in My Life: Safety Nets Continue to Matter

Posted by Thao Nguyen, Director of Outreach | Posted on: May 11, 2012 at 04:50 pm

This blog post is a part of NWLC’s Mother’s Day 2012 blog series. For all our Mother’s Day posts, please click here.

This mother’s day – I’d like to share an oldie but goodie blog post about the importance of moms in our lives, and how critical it is to provide them with the safety nets that they provide their children every day. This year, three of my four sisters are celebrating their first or second Mother’s Day. It was my mother’s desire to help others that drove me toward social justice work and the determination of my sisters that made me passionate about women’s issues. They are the moms that keep me going during the up-and-down emotional battles, long hours, and endless fights to ensure that women have access to the affordable and quality health care they need.

Lessons from My Mom: Even the Strong Need Help to Stay Secure

"I feel like I never know what to expect with life." My baby sister and I were sprawled on a makeshift bed for our "slumber party" with our mom when she said this. After our father died two days earlier in that same living room, we seemed to not want to leave it. So we just didn't. Unexpected to be sure, my mom just went to get their Tai Chi tape so they could practice together and when she came back her partner of 37 years had passed away. Indeed, my mom's life has been full of unexpected turns.

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Tags: Mother's Day, Safety Net, Data on Poverty & Income, Poverty & Income Support | Add new comment

The Affordable Care Act Goes to the Supreme Court

Posted by Thao Nguyen, Director of Outreach | Posted on: March 26, 2012 at 12:10 pm

Today, the Supreme Court will begin arguments about the constitutionality of provisions within the Affordable Care Act.

Watch our short video explaining the legal challenges, why we think the law is constitutional, and what women could lose if the law is struck down.

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Tags: Affordable Care Act (ACA), Health Care, Health Insurance, Issues Before the Courts, Supreme Court, Supreme Court, Health Care Reform, Health Care & Reproductive Rights, Judges & the Courts | Add new comment

Year of the Dragon: Let the Baby Boom Begin!

Posted by Thao Nguyen, Director of Outreach | Posted on: January 24, 2012 at 12:43 pm

This is what I remember about the Lunar New Year as a child: I got to stay up late to go to temple, people gave me money in red envelopes for no other reason than I was a kid, and a week of endless buffets with relatives. As an adult, this holiday has taken on a new meaning. Now, I can barely keep my eyes open for it to hit midnight, I send money home to stuff red envelopes for my nephews, and I organize my life around the Asian zodiac in a way that I mocked my parents for doing (sorry mom and dad).

Let me go back a little. I should start by saying that like many other Asian cultures, the Vietnamese use the Gregorian or Western calendar for our day-to-day activities, but still celebrate our New Year’s according to the lunar calendar. The Vietnamese New Year, our biggest holiday, is called Tet and follows the Asian zodiac, which means each year is associated with a different animal with a total of 12 animal years.

So for many Asian people, this week, not three weeks ago, starts our new year. And this year is like no other year – it’s the year of luck and fortune, also known as the year of the dragon. It’s believed that major events taking place during the year of the dragon are lucky. And a major event that people commonly aim for is having a baby.

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Tags: Affordable Care Act (ACA), Breastfeeding, Pre-Existing Conditions, Health Care Reform, Health Care & Reproductive Rights | Add new comment

Flawed Logic: Your Pre-Existing Condition Is Your Fault

Posted by Thao Nguyen, Director of Outreach | Posted on: January 10, 2012 at 02:28 pm

Imagine my shock, when I recently found out that not everyone reads our blog. I will give you a moment to recover from this astounding revelation (person who religiously reads our blog). For the very few of you that don't always read our blog, let me give you some insight into one of the many reasons you should start: it will give you a better understanding of how the health care law is improving, and will continue to improve, people's lives.

Recently, a former Senator said that people with pre-existing conditions should pay more for their health insurance — citing an example from his own life of having a daughter with a pre-existing condition and expecting to have to pay more for his family's health coverage as a result). Later, he elaborated on this point by telling a mother whose son survived cancer that people with pre-existing conditions should pay more for health care coverage because they make poor health care choices (though he did qualify this point by saying that, in this case, it wasn't really the young man's fault that he got cancer when he was five years old).

If he had read our blog, he'd realize a few things about why the provisions in the health care law that end denials of pre-existing conditions and limits rating of premiums are important:

  1. Having a pre-existing condition will make it very difficult, if not impossible, for some people to get health coverage: A couple of years ago, my doctors thought that I had a brain aneurysm. During this scary time in my life, I became worried that having the surgery would not only put me in medical debt, but would make me uninsurable in the future.
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Tags: Health Insurance, Health Care Reform, Health Care & Reproductive Rights | Add new comment

Thanks Health Care Law! 2.5 Million Young Adults Gain Health Coverage Through the Affordable Care Act

Posted by Thao Nguyen, Director of Outreach | Posted on: December 14, 2011 at 06:30 pm

It’s not hard to understand why the recent announcement that 2.5 million young adults have gained coverage through the Affordable Care Act is a big deal (this large gain is due to a provision in the law that went into effect on September 23, 2010 and allows adult children without access to job-based coverage the ability to enroll as a dependent on a parent’s plan). Let’s start with the fact that historically, young adults are one of the largest populations of uninsured in this country.

Also, because as cliché as it sounds, our youth is our future (I told you it was cheesy and cliché). They are our future entrepreneurs, artists, and underpaid (but very satisfied) non-profit employees working to make this country, this world, a better place. I know because I’m a proud member of this idealistic club.

Right after college, I got a job with a small non-profit that was lucky it could provide me with a computer, forget about health insurance. As someone who grew up with a mother who worked two jobs because our family needed health coverage (running her small business and a part-time job at a local store in order to assure our family had health insurance) I knew that benefits were no small luxury. But I didn’t like my choices: quit the job I loved and find something that included health benefits or cross my fingers and hope nothing went wrong with my health.

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Tags: Affordable Care Act (ACA), Health Insurance, Health Care Reform | Add new comment