Esther Choo, MD, MPH (@choo_ek), is associate professor at the Center for Policy and Research in Emergency Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. Last year, after the neo-Nazi demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia, she posted a series of tweets describing the unabashed racism she has experienced as a practicing Asian-American emergency physician. When that Twitter thread was retweeted by Chelsea Clinton, it went viral and was retweeted more than 25,500 times and seen by more than 4.5 million people, giving her, and her other work, an unexpected national spotlight. I recently interviewed her over Skype.
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ACEP Now: Vol 37 – No 05 – May 2018JF: When did you first join Twitter and why?
EC: It’s been six years now. I joined on the advice of a friend from medical school, Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA, who went on to be the Surgeon General of the United States. We were having lunch, and I was like, “I don’t even know what Twitter is. I don’t get what people do there, and I don’t know how to tweet,” and he said, “Trust me, this is a powerful thing.” I was super-skeptical, but I signed up and did some things with the Doctors for America and the Obama campaign around health care messaging. I participated and then kind of forgot about it. And then this FOAM [free open access medical education] thing happened, so I dipped back in and tried to participate in the ways that many people do. I met Seth Trueger, MD, MPH (@MDAware), and I was in the same office as Megan Ranney, MD, MPH (@MeganRanney). A bunch of us wrote a Twitter paper about what you should do with it in academia. Those were the days when most people thought it was a waste of time.
JF: How many followers did you have before your legendary thread about racism, because now you have around 25,000?
EC: I think I had four or five thousand.
JF: So at that point you were a fairly well-known academic on Twitter but this moment brought you a new type of following, right?
EC: Yes. Up until the low 1,000s, I had a tight circle. Even that number felt pretty tight. I knew who people were, mostly other physicians and health care providers, but it felt really rich. The beautiful thing at that range was feeling like I had colleagues internationally and a good mix of students, trainees, and people senior to me that I could learn from. When you hit that level, there’s momentum, and I felt like it became very interactive.
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3 Responses to “Using Twitter Fame to Advocate for Emergency Medicine”
June 9, 2018
Mark BuettnerThank you for the article Dr. Faust. Congratulations on your new found fame Dr. Choo. Wow, SELF, “Huffpo” and CNN after Just one Tweet? Just think of it, an appearance on CNN after just one Tweet? As they say, “Only in America” I guess. I do have a question about the racism you experienced. Was it exclusively the caucasian nationalists that were racist toward you? Did you experience any racism from nationalists of other races? I served in the U.S. Army with honorable men and women from various different races that were patriotic nationalists. In fact, I paired my shelter half (each soldier carries a half in the field) with the most patriotic nationalist I have ever met, Gilbert C. Gilbert was hispanic and hailed from Chicago. Oh boy was he proud of the Stars and Stripes. We became very good friends. Gilbert and I spent six weeks sleeping inside that tiny tent during a bitter cold winter, in a dusty and desolate desert. We remained bunk mates once our unit moved into the barracks. We did this because we were two young nationalists serving our country. We were protecting the very freedom that you exercised when you tweeted that people like me are racists. I am White and because of my sense of “Nationalism” I served OUR country. Dr. Choo you have made a mistake. Perhaps you meant “White Supremacists” not “White Nationalists”. I do not believe you truly hold the opinion that people like me are all racists. However, I will not say the same for CNN when they regularly mix the two identities. In closing I do have this to say: Dr. Choo, Dr. Faust and ACEP NOW editorial board, take a moment and reflect on why and how this article, in the form that it is in, made it to print in “The Official Voice of Emergency Medicine”.
June 9, 2018
TazYou are not the only one who served this great country. I’m Black, an emergency physician and an Army veteran who served in Bosnia as Chief of the ED. Dr. Choo spoke of her experience in her ED. I don’t think she needs to qualify it to anyone. It was her experience and her perception. Let her be.
Did your friend, Gilbert, describe himself as a nationalist or is that your description of him? True nationalists are indeed patriots. White nationalists are not. You have the unfortunate distinction of being White and a nationalist/patriot. I get the difference, but many will not. That is thanks to the White Nationalists who have bastardized the meaning of the name. And they are racists. I don’t think that is an issue you should take up with Dr. Choo. Take it up with the White Nationalists.
The “Official Voice of Emergency Medicine” is each of us who are emergency physicians. Each voice is the the official voice.
April 6, 2021
Bradley R. Caloia D.O.It truly is shameful that the current poisonous political atmosphere has infiltrated even our ranks. Everyday it seems divisive ideas, tribalism and critical race theory creep further into our institutions. It helps nothing and serves only to prevent us from even listening to each other. A cancer. Dr. Choo is on record making comments about “truly exhausting white people” and multiple tweets stereotyping and labelling people. She claims to be the victim of the very racism she is visibly spreading. It is a growing frustration to see not only respected individuals on Twitter, but our colleges and our publications spreading these destructive ideas. Our charter, our very duty is to approach our patients without regard to color, religion, status. We take all comers. We are those who truly make a difference day in and day out for our patients regardless of how they identify. When we are giving air time to grifters like Ibram X. Kendi and giving voice to frankly racist policies, I can say with absolute certainty that this publication is drifting away from the official voice of the majority of EM and becoming a tool of a radical few.