The first recorded Hmong people arrive in the U.S. and settle primarily in Minnesota.
Date: 1975
This first wave are mainly soldiers and workers associated with the United States' Secret War effort in Laos. Most have had no contact with Western medicine and cultural systems before the war.
With an intact cultural health system, the Hmong community is often struggles with the U.S. health system over diagnosis and treatment. Some of the early integrative care strategies that emerge in the Midwest focus on supporting care that is rooted in a Hmong cultural system alongside a Western model of care.