Gay Gastroenterologist Finds His Voice in Social Media
Dr. Austin Chiang says he got into medicine because he was interested in science and people. Once he became a physician, though, he learned that social media is a powerful tool for delivering healthcare information to a new generation of digital natives. This discovery launched a whole new side gig, where he now has a combined 960,000 followers on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok.
In this episode of Gay in America Podcast, find out how Dr. Chiang got where he is today and how coming out in a conservative Asian family was more of a leaking out experience than a coming out one.
Instagram: @austinchiangmd
Facebook: /AustinChiangMD
Website: www.austinchiang.com
YouTube: www.youtube.com/austinchiangmd
TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@austinchiangmd
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Dr. Austin Chiang (00:00):
Essentially, I didn't really have a desire to come out publicly on social media, and TikTok kind of outed me in a way how scary their algorithms are. And they actually just told me, they were like, so you're going to be on this list of 25 L-G-B-T-Q, whatever. And I'm like, oh, that's awesome. And they're like, there's going to be a magazine interview, blah, blah, blah. And if I turn it down and said, don't include me, then that would've been it. But I was like, at the time I even said, I don't know if I'm comfortable with this. Can you position me at an ally or something? I didn't know at the time. But then over time I just was like, whatever.
Host (00:47):
Gay in America is an oral history podcast sharing experiences of gay people from all orientations, backgrounds, and ages in America. Our goal is to inspire each other to live our best gay lives and help us all understand that our shared experiences unite us as a community. Today's guest is a gastroenterologist in Pennsylvania who was one of the first in the medical professions to learn how to use the power of social media to deliver accurate healthcare information to a new digital generation. Coming from a conservative Asian family, he had a few personal mountains to climb to become a physician, corporate executive, and social media influencer. Let's dive into a story.
Dr. Austin Chiang (01:37):
Hi, I'm Austin Chang. I am a physician in Philadelphia. I am 37 and I straddle two different worlds of academia as well as med tech and a little bit of social media as well. The decision to go into medicine was sort of, I feel like ingrained in me since childhood parents involved me and volunteering activities, and I felt like I had this urge to want to do something with patients, and I'd always had an interest in the sciences as well. So it kind of combined the interest of wanting to have that sort of patient encounter and an interest in science.
Host (02:25):
His parents may have influenced him to get into medicine, but finding a specialization,
Dr. Austin Chiang (02:30):
It was sort of a discovery process through my medical training because I didn't know that that was what I wanted to do initially, and I thought I wanted to do something procedural and ultimately settled on gastroenterology because there's a wide variety of different organ systems and a lot of innovation happening in that field, so I thought it would be a good fit Within gastroenterology, I am an advanced endoscopist, so I went through additional training to do more complex procedures. A lot of it has to do with pancreas, the bile duct system, but also did another fellowship in endoscopic weight loss. So these are weight loss procedures done through the mouth rather than through the skin. So it's very procedural. It's not just colonoscopies and IBS. It's a lot of dealing with complications of cancers and other issues like that.
Host (03:22):
So Austin is pretty good at medicine, but he's also a social media star with a combined 690,000 followers across Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook.
Dr. Austin Chiang (03:36):
So social media has always been kind of a side interest of mine. I grew up in this social media generation and Facebook came out my freshman year in college, so I was the target demographic for that launch. I kind of going through my medical training realized that social media could be a great tool to reach the general public, and so I started taking it seriously as a professional tool. About a decade ago time, there were very few believers in social media and healthcare and that intersection, but I noticed that what I was tweeting out, Twitter was my main platform at the time. There would be some patients and others who would actually be there listening or engaging
Host (04:19):
Initially, he just proved the concept would work, but then
Dr. Austin Chiang (04:24):
Over time I also sort of introduced it to my field and a lot of my colleagues started getting on social media and it's become a great networking tool, a great educational tool, and my main focus was always trying to speak to what I was trained to talk about in an accurate way so that there would be less garbage on the internet and more accurate information. And so then I went on all the other different platforms as they were kind of rolled out Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and really embraced each one for its qualities and its communities. From there, it just sort of took off and started a nonprofit called the Association for Healthcare Social Media, which was meant to educate health professionals and how to use social media effectively and responsibly. I no longer lead that organization, but through that experience partnered with a lot of the main social media platforms and they would give us tools to educate my colleagues on how to use social media well.
Host (05:26):
But it was Dr. Chang who figured out what works.
Dr. Austin Chiang (05:30):
I try to package the content medical knowledge in a way that is digestible and accessible and fun. That's really my goal. I feel like there's ways to convey information that isn't just throwing data at people. It can be fun and interesting, and I'm by no means the only person doing this at this point. I feel like there are a lot of people who are doing a great job on social media, but that's really the angle that I go at it with.
Host (05:58):
His content isn't always specifically oriented towards the L-G-B-T-Q community, but he does believe his efforts make a positive difference for that community.
Dr. Austin Chiang (06:09):
I've been able to share my own story and hopefully have an impact on others through that. And then with my current roles as a physician, as an educator in academia, as corporate executive at a big Fortune 500 company, I felt it was important to also just be there for representation and to show that this isn't getting in the way of my career aspirations. It's still, in fact, actually complimenting what I'm doing.
Host (06:40):
He's a busy man. How does he make time for it all?
Dr. Austin Chiang (06:45):
I think it's always just a constant reprioritization and shuffling of the cards. I think that I wouldn't be doing some of these things if they weren't truly interests of mine and things I was passionate about, and so that keeps me going because a lot of what I do is fun and sometimes doesn't even feel like work.
Host (07:04):
Was his drive to succeed related to being a sexual minority?
Dr. Austin Chiang (07:09):
Oh, a thousand percent. I think that part of this drive and ambition was compensatory and was in a way trying to prove that if I can just do better from a career perspective, prove everyone wrong, show that I can get places and achieve things. In some ways, it's validating in ways that I wasn't validated from a sexual orientation perspective, and I'm happy to see that the climate has changed a lot over the years, but I think if I rewind 20 years ago when I was in college and going through all of that, that was definitely a big motivator for me.
Host (07:54):
Many of us, his coming out story began early in life.
Dr. Austin Chiang (07:59):
I don't know the exact age, but I'd say maybe five or six is my guess. I didn't think I admitted it to myself at the time. I don't think I admitted it to myself until I was well into college.
Host (08:14):
What were the signs?
Dr. Austin Chiang (08:15):
I don't know if I felt different per se. I definitely had certain interests. I don't mean to stereotype, but interest in the arts and things like that. Yeah, I guess that was probably different from some of my peers in school, but I guess I never put two and two together with the label. And yeah, it wasn't until later that I actually had to come to terms with that.
Host (08:42):
I wondered how his family took the news.
Dr. Austin Chiang (08:44):
It was a little bit rough. My parents are conservative minded Asian parents, not politically, but just conservative in terms of how they culturally were raised, and I think that I was born here in the us, but then we moved abroad to Taiwan, and that move kind of didn't allow them to see a lot of the progress that was happening here in the US at the time when I was going through all of that as a teenager, when it came time to have those conversations coming out, et cetera, I feel like the coming out process was not very straightforward for me. It was kind of evolution over years and years of just constant conversation, denial, bits and pieces of acceptance, and then just moving the needle further and further along.
Host (09:34):
So Austin didn't really come out instead he slowly leaked out.
Dr. Austin Chiang (09:41):
Yeah, I guess you could say. So yeah, even with friends, I chose some friends to talk about this openly with and others not, and it took time for me to fully come out. I'd say.
Host (09:54):
At what point was he able to just be out
Dr. Austin Chiang (09:57):
To friends? Yes. I would say probably towards the end of medical school I've been in a relationship, so it was kind of like in some ways I had to, but then I feel like in the workplace that was a different story. I tried to keep my personal life very private and I was going through medical training and I still had this kind of notion in the back of my mind that it could somehow get in the way of career progression. And yeah, it was only until very recently I'd say that I was much more comfortable about putting myself out there and having been on social media and kind of built a little bit of a public presence, I also kind of waited a very long time until I actually spoke openly about that. And I don't recall exactly which year it was that I started talking about it openly, but maybe two, three years ago. So yeah, still quite recent,
Host (10:53):
But was it really a secret?
Dr. Austin Chiang (10:56):
Oh, absolutely. I'm sure everyone knew well in some ways. When I was in college, I went to Duke for undergrad, and at the time Duke was not as progressive then as it's now, and so I think that maybe there was less of an assumption then to a certain degree. There are definitely moments now that I look back and I'm like, of course everyone probably knew.
Host (11:21):
He said earlier that he knew from a young age that he was different, but I wondered when his first real gay experience occurred.
Dr. Austin Chiang (11:29):
Gosh, this is getting very personal, I would say. Well, it depends on how you define gay experience, I suppose. But I would say that when I was in high school, just coming to terms and having my first conversation with someone else about our sexuality, that was senior year of high school, and that was sort of the beginning of exploring kind of being gay.
Host (11:58):
Being gay in America can be a pretty negative experience.
Dr. Austin Chiang (12:04):
I feel like I try to block out a lot of those memories. I'm sure like many others, bullies along the way or friendships that have been broken because of this. Parts of the coming out experience without a family were difficult, and even today there's still struggles with that identity and navigating this community because we all know it's not easy. It can be difficult, especially I think today where a lot of it feels like it's under threat. I think that's even harder.
Host (12:39):
Nevertheless, being gay also has its rewards.
Dr. Austin Chiang (12:43):
I mean, I've had several relationships and I've learned a lot from those relationships. I don't think that anything is entirely positive or negative with those, but personally, those experiences have been very fruitful and character building at the same time. I feel like I've gotten a lot of gratification through being recognized by a lot of gay organizations and working with gay organization. So for the longest time, I always admired what the Trevor Project was doing, and finally when I got a chance to kind of work with them and kind of be a little bit of an ambassador for them through TikTok at the time, that was really fun. I was so excited to finally be able to lend my voice to that cause. And then two years ago, glad actually there was another kind of TikTok award that I was nominated for through GLAD and the Glad Media Awards, and so that was a big deal for me. And then last year, the certain general gave me a shout out for talking about L-G-B-T-Q-I-A issues on social media, and that was another big moment for me. So a lot of it has been social media related, but I think at the end of the day, just being able to connect with these organizations with a lot of great people in the community has been very rewarding.
Host (14:03):
Looking back, would he have done anything differently
Dr. Austin Chiang (14:07):
In any context of that question? I always feel like I wouldn't be where I am today without a lot of the experiences that I've had. So it's hard for me to say that I'd like to change anything. Obviously, there were difficult times that maybe I wish weren't so difficult, but at the same time, if I didn't experience those lows, I wouldn't be able to recognize some highs in life. So not a whole lot. I would say I am grateful for a lot of those experiences that weren't so great because without them, I probably wouldn't be where I am today in a lot of different regards. So no, I don't think that I would necessarily do things differently. I'd say there may be things that I would want to do differently moving forward that I'm still learning, and I don't want to say experimenting, but exploring different approaches and paths. And I've always prided myself in wanting to just be open-minded about different perspectives and different approaches to life and continuing to learn every day,
Host (15:10):
What does he want his life to look like in the future?
Dr. Austin Chiang (15:13):
Learn more about myself. I want to settle down with someone hopefully one day and create a family, explore the world, and do all the great things. That's really the ultimate goal, I'd say.
(15:35):
I mean, I hope that I can still be someone who can share my experience with others and potentially help people out who may be struggling with their identity or have doubts about how this is going to affect their life, their career, whatever it might be. There are people along the way who showed me that it can be done, and I want to be that for other people as well. From a career perspective, obviously I'd love to continue doing what I'm doing and see what greater heights it takes me to and what sort of impact I can have both in my specific industry and field, especially within the field of gastroenterology. It's only in recent years that we've had a community that's been open and speaking out and very kind of visible. And so I'm proud to be a part of that community.
Host (16:31):
He has a bit of advice for all of us.
Dr. Austin Chiang (16:35):
You do you. And don't let anyone else try to squash your dreams or get in the way of what you want to do or who you want to be. I feel like many of us have had a lot of people saying no and trying to get in the way of our hopes and dreams. And if you stick to what you believe in and what you're passionate about, whether it's career, whether it's your identity, whether it's just any other sort of personal that you have, stick to it. And I think in this day and age, it's easier than ever to find that community and link up with 'em.
Host (17:09):
Do you feel a connection?
Dr. Austin Chiang (17:11):
Like I said, I always want to put myself out there as a resource. So if anyone wants to chat with me about this, feel free to find me on the internet. I'm pretty easy to find. It's basically my name everywhere, on every platform. I can't be the first one who's gone through a lot of the struggles that I've been through and certainly not the last. And so always happy to have a conversation about myself, about my career, anything.
Host (17:42):
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