2023 is the Year of the Rabbit. The rabbit is said to bring good luck.

Last summer, the Tucson Chinese Cultural Center was awarded two federal grants totaling more than $300,000, in an unlikely move recognized by the center’s leadership.

Longtime Volunteer Executive Director Susan Chan says it wasn’t just luck, it was fate.

Or maybe a bit of both.

Last spring, Chan received an email inviting him to apply for a pair of federal grants through the center. National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and PreventionIt was the first time. In 23 years the center had never applied for a grant.

But in the year of COVID, which has forced centers to close for more than two years and put colorful celebrations like Lunar New Year on hold, we’ve come up with a little tweak of our mission to help our community in this new pandemic situation. I needed a jump start.

“We can’t do it like we used to. They also distributed masks to anyone who asked for them.

“For three years, we did a lot of vaccine clinics. We did outreach. We gave out a lot of masks. “Many people are blaming it for calling it a Chinese virus. During that time, anti-Asian comments have been made. I received a few calls, one of which was had to report to the FBI.”

Anti-Asian/anti-Chinese hatred has become so destabilizing nationwide, and even in Tucson, that the center hosted a Zoom roundtable with law enforcement officers on how to stay safe.

Chan said more than 100 people attended.

Then, last April, I received an email encouraging me to apply for a CDC and NIH grant to the Tucson Chinese Cultural Center.

Oh my god, Chan thought. She hired a pair of medical professors at the University of Arizona. Dr. Howard Ng, Professor of Pharmacy and Public Health at the University of Arizona. And, drawing on Dr. Zhao Chen, associate dean of research at her Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health at UA, and former attorney Robin Blackwood, an expert in Chinese history in Tucson, she made a grant proposal. I helped write the book.

Chan said he was not holding his breath. Their expectations weren’t particularly high, as many had warned that organizations rarely win grants on their first attempt.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Chan said of learning in August that the center had won a $100,000 CDC grant and potentially over $200,000 in NIH grants over five years. “Usually it takes years to receive a grant like this, but we were the first to receive it. We were shocked…and overjoyed.”

A one-time CDC grant will fund research that addresses COVID-19 disparities in Asian communities in Pima County. NIH’s $45,000 Annual “All of Us” Grant, Renewable for Up to Five Years, Allows Center to Explore Health Patterns in Older Adults to Identify Ways to Provide Better Health Care to Meet Their Needs can.it is part of The All of Us Program’s Precision Medicine Initiative with its partner Asian Health Federation When Asia Engagement and Recruitment Core.

Chan said a major focus of the center’s “All of Us” grant is to develop healthy Asian living programs for older adults, addressing ways to develop and maintain a healthy lifestyle. He said it would include educational speakers and nutrition programs that the center hopes to include. Grow into something similar to her Meals on Wheels, a meal delivery system for the community’s most vulnerable seniors. They also want to start a home care program of some sort, Chan said.

If the pandemic has had a positive side, it’s forced the Chinese Cultural Center to rethink its mission and how to achieve it, Zhang said.

“Because of the pandemic, we need a different way to run the center. We can’t do it like we used to. We have to think outside the box,” she said Collaborate with the UA East Asian Studies Program on several programs, including expanding the Center’s popular excursion series, which focuses on schools in I included that. Curtis Chin and New York Times bestselling author Jamie Ford.

Saturday’s Lunar New Year celebration is the center’s first large-scale public event since the pandemic. Includes Chinese performances and a gourmet Chinese buffet.