My Australia Story: Dr. Jacinta Vu

Maggie Jiang: Hello, welcome to My Australia Story. I'm Maggie Jiang. In this series, we celebrate the resilience and contributions of individuals who have made a significant impact on Australia's multicultural landscape. Today we're joined by Dr. Jacinta Vu, an accomplished oral medicine specialist, educator, and passionate advocate for social justice. Dr. Vu is a co-owner of the Center for Oral Medicine and Facial Pain, and the Director of Healing Smiles, a charity that provides trauma-informed dental care to women survivors of domestic violence. Dr. Vu, thank you very much for joining us today and for sharing your inspiring journey with us.

Jacinta Vu: Thank you, Maggie.

MJ: Dr. Vu, can we start by hearing a bit of your background please?

JV: Uh, I was born in the UK. My parents had migrated there from Malaysia and from Sri Lanka respectively, and they met there and got married, and then they had myself and my brother. Uh, we lived in the UK until I was eight years old and then we moved to Sydney. We were in Sydney for about 18 months before my parents decided that Perth was the place for us that they wanted to bring us up in Perth. And Perth has been home ever since, except for about four years when I did my post-grad studies in Sydney.

MJ: Great. Dr. Vu, you're known for being a trailblazer in social justice through Healing Smiles. So how did you first become interested in dentistry and what inspired you to pursue a career in this area?

JV: I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, probably up until year 12, but in year 12, something about healthcare was drawing me in. My parents actually actively discouraged me from studying medicine because my mum was a nurse and she had seen firsthand, um, all of the sacrifices that doctors had to make during their career journey. So, we went to an open evening at UWA on dentistry, and there was a career choice where I could work with my hands, be in healthcare, meet lots of patients, and there was also regular hours. And the bonus was once you finished university, you were actually fully qualified as a general dentist as well.

MJ: Dr. Vu, as a first-generation migrant, how did your early experiences shape your sense of identity and your approach to your career?

JV: From a young age the need to fit in and to belong was very strong, having grown up in a community where my parents were migrants themselves, and then being a migrant myself when we moved to Australia. So I learned early on that I was a bit of an observer and someone who seeks to understand the world around me and others and their motivations. So I'm a quieter type of person and I like to listen to other people, and I think that's really shaped how I fit, uh, in my life in a number of ways. In professionally it means that I'm really good at listening to people, um, trying to hear and understand their stories and their motivations to help them through their healthcare journey. It also helps me to communicate effectively with my colleagues as well, um, and in the community I seek to understand what are the needs of people around me and that informs me, um, of the things that are needed around me and where I can fit in, where I can help, and ultimately that helps me to feel that I belong. And I really value, uh, thoughtfulness before just impulsive action.

MJ: Excellent. Thank you so much. Dr. Vu, you've achieved so much in your career, particularly with Healing Smiles. Can you walk us through your journey from being a dentist to becoming a clinical director of Healing Smiles?

JV: So my journey as a dentist started off on graduation. I worked for the public dental health system and I was in Exmouth, WA, so remote and regional area, and it was always my way of giving back to the larger community, and I really wanted to experience rural life. I was there for 18 months and we used to travel to Onslow as well, a town which was a four-hour drive away, and we'd spend one week a month in Onslow, providing dental services to that community. After 18 months, we moved, I moved back to, um, to Perth and I was working in the Metropolitan Dental Clinic, still in the public system. And I also, um, picked up some private practice hours after hours and on weekends as well to get a taste of what private practice was like. Within three to four years, I actually became the head of unit at Swan General Dental Clinic, and that was at a very young age. I think I was 27.

MJ: Wow.

JV: And I was in a role where that was the highest I could go in public dentistry and still be seeing patients. The next step from there would've been more administrative and policy driven. And that gave me, uh, some insight to think about where I wanted to go in my career and not really knowing what exactly I wanted to do, and I'd just gotten married as well. I decided that I would sit the primary dental examinations in the Royal Australasian College of Dental Surgeons with a view to a fellowship in that college. And whilst I was studying, uh, for those examinations, I met a group of friends and those friends said to me, why aren't you specializing? How come you're just doing this? And I said, well, I'm not sure, but I always said I would do the fellowship, but they made me think. So, I went home, I wrote down all of the possible dental specialties that you could study, and I crossed them off the list one by one until I got to oral medicine. And oral medicine really fit all of the things that we were studying, that I was enjoying, all of the basic sciences that you could use every day in clinical practice. So, I decided, okay, I'm going to apply to get into oral medicine. I'm only going to apply to one university, and if I get in, it's meant to be, and if I don't, then it's a different pathway. And I applied to the University of Sydney, um, wanting to travel interstate or somewhere else and live somewhere different for a while. And I did get in and it was like one of those dream days where everything goes right, on the day of the interview, as well as when I started oral medicine, it was like falling in love. It was really, this is the career that drives me and inspires me with my patients and in healthcare.

So, after I finished studying postgraduate, um, oral medicine studies at the University of Sydney, we moved back to Perth, and it took a little while to settle into home and I was working in a private oral medicine specialist practice. And after a few years having children, maternity leave on and off, out and in and out of practice and working part-time, uh, the opportunity came up to lead Healing Smiles and to be more involved. And from there we became a charity, and ultimately, I'm a director of Healing Smiles now.

MJ: Great. Sounds like there has been some turning points in this journey. Wonderful.

JV: Yes, a lot.

MJ: Thank you.

JV: Thank you.

MJ: Dr. Vu, what role did the Women in Dentistry Society play in your career? And then, what was your time as president shape your vision of society in terms of helping women in dentistry?

JV: So, the Women in Dentistry Society had been set up a couple of years before I had come back to Perth. And during my time on maternity leave and working part-time, it was a way for me to meet other women in dentistry and have that collegiality and be involved in, you know, having some continuing professional development as well. Soon after going to one of the first events that I attended, I was asked to join the committee, and so I said yes, and I was the treasurer for two years, and then I became the president for another three or four years after that. The Women in Dentistry Society, it was a fantastic way, especially and be involved in, you know, amongst the committee members to form really solid friendships with other women, which I think is so important for women. And I enjoyed putting together events and finding different speakers that could provide some education for our members. My vision for the Society was to make it sustainable, so we had a constitution change where we could draw in more than just dental specialists, but also general dentists into the committee so we could broaden our scope and our inclusion policies as well. We also made it a little bit more digital and tried to encourage mentorship within our members and the society as well.

MJ: Excellent. Dr. Vu Healing Smiles had made such a meaningful impact. What inspired you to get involved with this initiative and with any challenges you faced?

JV: Healing Smiles came from within the Women in Dentistry Society initially as a way for the women dentists, and dental specialists in Perth, to use their skills and expertise to give back to the community around us and to support other women in our community and what better way to help but those women who were fleeing from domestic violence who needed so much help. I was inspired not only by the strength, the courage and the resilience of women's survivors, but knowing other women, who were also professionals, who have been in family and domestic violence relationships. It is such an easy thing to fall into. It's almost like a sliding doors moment of choices. And I would like to empower my children to have the confidence and hopefully the courage not to fall into those traps. So, for me, working within Healing Smiles is a way to encourage them to look broadly, as well.

We have had a lot of challenges along the way. We started off as a very small network of women practitioners who would see patients within their own practices or wherever they were working from there. The demand for our services grew exponentially, and we have, we had very long waiting lists. We also had COVID-19 and the pandemic put a significant dent into provision of dental services because you couldn't do aerosol generating procedures because of the spread of the infection. So that meant that our waiting list continued to increase. And not only that, the pandemic also meant that there were more instances of family and domestic violence, particularly during lockdowns as well. So, trying to manage the flow of patients to get the essential dental care that they needed was our first significant challenge.

Finding, uh, volunteers. There were lots of people who would volunteer, but they didn't always have a clinic or a space that they could see patients in. So, finding a clinic location that we could work out of was also a significant challenge.

And then, of course, the biggest one: Funding. We worked for many years, uh, at least four years without any funding at all, zero funding, so, it was all done by our volunteers, by their goodness of heart. They donated their time, they donated their dental materials, they donated their staff and their clinical space to support our patients.

The other challenges have been the time it takes to set up as a not-for-profit with a deductible gift recipient status. That took some time to set up a constitution. We needed to have a lot of help, legal advice, around that as well.

And just making sure that we were independent, impactful and continuing to do what we are saying that we are doing, which is to serve women, survivors of family and domestic violence and continue to do so.

MJ: Fantastic. Amazing humans. Thank you. Dr. V, can you explain a bit more about trauma-informed dental care and why it is so important for people who suffered from domestic violence?

JV: Trauma-informed dental care is essentially a way of providing or delivering dental care in a very sensitive manner to patients who have been through a trauma. They can suffer from anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and there are many things that can trigger them into those feelings of fear, shame, of panic. So, it's a way of ensuring that the patient is seen, ensuring the patient's voice is heard, and it's done in a sensitive manner to ensure that they feel safe and they can put their trust into you.

So, it's a very important foundation for survivors of family and domestic violence because they may have suffered from physical violence, sexual violence, emotional violence, and coercive control. Giving them back the sense of control over where they are in the dental treatment is very important. Dental treatment, as you can imagine, when you are lying back in a dental chair and someone is behind you or leaning over you, it's a real position of vulnerability and it can be extremely triggering and not just the position that you're in with somebody over you, but the sounds, the smells, it's hard for most people, let alone patients who've been traumatized. MJ: Thank you. As someone with multicultural background, how does Australia diversity impact on your approach to your work or to community engagement?

JV: I think most of the time I don't really think of myself as multicultural in a way. Mm-hmm. I've been in Australia, you know, for most of my life, and I really do think of myself as Australian as someone who is a blend of different cultures. My family has come from two different countries, and I'm married to someone from another culture myself. But that has given me a great insight into the way other people's cultures are. And I couldn't speak the language of my, my, I couldn't speak with my grandparents in their language, but we managed to communicate somehow. And so, I find that when I meet patients of a different cultural or social background, that I can really spend time to try and understand them, and to communicate with them in a way that they can understand me before we even move to any treatment or care. And that's really important to me.

MJ: Dr. Vu, your work with Healing Smiles seems rooted in empathy and understanding. Can you share a story with us about how you see the firsthand life changing impact of your dental care onto someone in need?

JV: I think the best example I can think of was when I was a general dentist and I was working for a short period of time in Fitzroy Crossing in the far north of Western Australia. And I met a patient there, a lady from one of the Aboriginal communities.

We didn't speak the same language, but somehow, we managed to communicate that she was in pain from a toothache. The tooth had been hurting her for many months, and she'd been putting up with it, having difficulty eating and sometimes speaking as well. Somehow by some sign language. And so, a few words and pointing, we managed to work out that the tooth needed to be extracted. She, she did consent to that, and then we undertook that procedure following that. It wasn't the easiest extraction either. So, this poor lady was very difficult when you are trying to explain things and someone doesn't speak your language, but you do your best.

Anyhow, after the extraction, she was quite teary and I was so worried that something had, she was feeling pain and that she was upset with something that I had done. Nevertheless, she, she went home and the following day a friend of hers actually came into the clinic and she said, oh, you saw my friend yesterday. She's so happy. She was crying because she was happy she didn't have pain anymore and she's smiling again, and she can eat today. And she was very grateful. And that just showed me how much impact you can have just by being with someone and trying to understand what they need. And there are many different ways to communicate as well.

MJ: That's fantastic to hear. Thank you so much for sharing that story. Thank you. Dr. Boo. Balancing a successful career and giving back to the community is huge achievement. So how do you manage your time and energy to make sure that you can keep giving back to the community whilst you're advancing your own career?

JV: I think my career in oral medicine and my career, or my journey in Healing Smiles, they both have the same core values, which is courage, determination, compassion. Those are the things that drive me. I get to help individual patients in my career as an oral medicine specialist and with Healing Smiles, it's still the same care, but it's on a wider level. And although I don't get to see patients in healing, smiles very often, my skills in leadership and being organized and determined to succeed and to drive healing smiles forward to be impact led, really means that I am in alignment with my values. And being in alignment with my values means that I feel energized and it doesn't feel depleting to be doing this work.

So, I do have a very busy life. I have four children at home. I also have my private practice, which I work four days a week, and then I do my volunteering time after hours on weekends where I can fit it in. But I also do manage to find time for myself to catch up with friends, to exercise, and to spend time with my family. I think you just become quite efficient when you're busy and you also learned very quickly that done is better than perfect with many things.

MJ: This is amazing and well done to your extraordinary time management ability. Fantastic.

JV: Thank you.

MJ: Dr. Vu, what has been the biggest challenges you faced as a first-generation migrant and how did you overcome these challenges?

JV: I think, sometimes it has seemed that other people maybe of different ethnicities have gotten more attention or more help or assistance than I have, but that just made me much more determined to succeed on my own merits. And I'm really proud that everything I have done has been because of my work and my integrity as well. Being authentic, being myself and holding my integrity is really integral, and I think that's what stands you in, in good stead.

MJ: Excellent. Dr. Vu, what advice would you give to young migrants or female professionals who wants to pursue a career in, oral medicine or male dominated fields?

JV: I would say first off, those male dominated fields need you. We need to challenge the gender stereotypes that are around us. We also, as multicultural women, migrant women, people of different ethnicities and social backgrounds. We need to be firm in ourselves. We need to be authentic. We need to embrace our uniqueness and our values and bring that to the workplace. That is so important. The diversity in Australia is what makes us such a unique and interesting nation, and we should bring that to the workplace as well.

MJ: Dr. Vu, what are the next goals for Healing Smiles and for your own career? And do have any exciting projects that you are, you want to share with us?

JV: So, in Oral Medicine, what I'm striving for is just to continue to provide excellent clinical care for my patients and to continue to see our practice flourish and grow For Healing Smiles, there is a lot going on on the horizon. We would like to secure more funding by applying for grants, by meeting people who may like to donate to us, um, so that we can continue our work.

We've already established one clinic, which is situated in Northbridge. What we would like to do in the future is to establish potentially regional clinics as well. Hopefully within the next three to five years, we would also like to look at providing a pediatric service for children who survived family and domestic violence as well. There are many, many things that we want to do.

Another key thing that we would like to implement this year is a volunteer wellbeing program, ensuring that our volunteers are looked after from an emotional perspective and a mental health perspective as well.

In addition, I'd like to share the model of what Healing Smiles has been doing with other states. Healing Smiles has achieved a lot in a short period of time, and it's just a testament to show how much you can do if you take action. And instead of just talking to put things into place. And there are certainly other dentists who would be able to replicate or even utilize parts of our model to provide similar care to survivors of family and domestic violence.

MJ: Wonderful. Dr.Vu, how do you see the roles of healthcare professionals evolving in terms of supporting vulnerable communities in this country, particularly, you know, refugees or migrants?

JV: Australia has a very ethnically diverse population, and the role of healthcare professionals in serving these communities is really important. I think we need to all provide trauma-informed care. Many people are coming as refugees or migrants from war-torn countries, and they need extra help and extra support to even take the step to look after their own health. I think it's really important that we listen to what the needs of each community are, so community consultation, and I think that we should also encourage people from those communities to work in healthcare and inform us of what their community needs are in a really practical way.

MJ: Dr. Vu, as someone who is clearly committed to improving the lives of others, so what do you hope your legacy will be in both your professional career and in your community engagement?

JV: I don't really think of myself as potentially leaving a legacy, but I've had to think about it a little bit recently. I would hope that in dentistry that we open the communication and the door to every dentist providing trauma-informed dental care. It doesn't matter who walks through your door. Everybody has their own journey and their own story. And without understanding that and providing mechanical care, it doesn't serve the patient to empower them. So, I would like to see that become a more something that is done every day by every dentist.

I would also like to see that in the long term, we have less family and domestic violence, and hopefully services like Healing Smiles would not be needed, but that might be quite a long time away. Given the statistics of family and domestic violence in Australia, which are quite alarming with one in four women over the age of 15, having been, having experienced family and domestic violence in their lives.

For a legacy within the broader community, I hope that I inspire other people to take action. to understand that even one small thing that they do can have such a powerful impact on somebody else. One inspiring quote that I heard this year was that “Helping one person might not change the world, but you might change the world for that one person.”

MJ: That's an amazing quote. Thank you. Dr. Vu, as someone has contributed so much to both the dental field and to the community, how do you think your story reflects the Australian spirit or the essence of being Australian today?

JV: I really had to think about what being Australian means to me. And for me, being Australian means mate ship, community, spirit, resilience, determination, courage. It also means being compassionate and giving everyone a-fair-go, and helping others around you. I never dreamt coming to Australia as an 8-year-old that I would be awarded an Australian of the Year award as the 2025 W.A. Local Hero. I don't think you can get much more Australian than that. The awards stand for everything that is Australian, and I think my story, and my spirit, shares the Australian values.

MJ: Fantastic. Thank you, Dr. Vu. Thank you so much for sharing your incredible story with us today. Your commitment to both your profession and your community highlights the profound impact one individual can make. We wish you continued success in your future endeavors and thank you for all you do.

To our viewers, thank you for joining us on My Australia Story. We'll continue to highlight the contributions of individuals who are helping to shape Australia's diverse and thriving identity. See you next time.