August 2026: South Asian Heritage Month
From our APAMSA family to you: Happy South Asian Heritage Month! ✨ Join us throughout August as we celebrate the richness, diversity, and resilience of South Asian communities while highlighting the intersections of culture, identity, health, and medicine.
Throughout the month, we’ll be sharing our South Asian Health Series, beginning with an introductory post followed by educational videos exploring health issues that disproportionately affect South Asian communities. Topics will include type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and mental health, with a focus on the cultural, biological, and systemic nuances that shape these conversations.
These posts are designed to make important health information accessible to future physicians, healthcare professionals, and members of the broader community. Our goal is to encourage more informed, culturally responsive care and stronger advocacy for South Asian patients.
We’re also excited to feature Mindful Desi Drinks, a special social media series celebrating culturally inspired beverages while encouraging moments of mindfulness, reflection, and wellness. Be sure to follow along and share your favorites!
On August 24, join us for our featured Spotlight Event with Dr. Rupa Juthani, a board-certified neurosurgeon, physician educator, and prominent medical content creator. Dr. Juthani will share her experiences as a South Asian woman in medicine, discuss representation and identity within a demanding surgical specialty, and reflect on how she uses social media to educate, advocate, and inspire future physicians. We will also announce the winner of our South Asian Heritage Month Spotlight during the event.
We’re also launching a Research Grant Proposal Contest focused on South Asian health disparities. Participants are invited to submit innovative research proposals addressing health inequities affecting South Asian communities. Selected proposals will receive recognition and may be eligible for support through APAMSA.
Finally, show us your creativity through our South Asian Heritage Month Merch Design Contest! Submit an original design celebrating South Asian culture, identity, health, or representation in medicine. The winning artist will receive an APAMSA merchandise item!
Follow along throughout the month for event details, submission guidelines, deadlines, educational content, and opportunities to celebrate South Asian excellence in medicine and beyond. 💛
August 1, 2026
Celebrate South Asian Heritage Month by designing the next piece of official APAMSA merch! Submit your original artwork for a chance to be featured on our storefront and win a product featuring your own design! Browse our current collection for inspiration: apamsa-shop.fourthwall.com
Open to Everyone!
Deadline: August 10th 11:59 PM!
August 4, 2026
🌟 South Asian Heritage Health Research Grant — Apply Today!
Are you passionate about improving health outcomes & understanding health experiences in South Asian communities? We want to support your work! 💛
This grant is open to researchers, students, and community health advocates exploring topics like chronic disease, mental health, cultural health practices, healthcare access, and beyond. One winner will receive $100 to help bring their project to life! 🎉
📋 Fill out our short application and take the next step in advancing health equity and well-being for South Asian communities.
⏰ Deadline: August 20, 2026
🏆 Winner announced at our Speaker Event: August 24, 2026
🔗 tinyurl.com/APAMSASouthAsianResearchGrant
📩 Questions? Reach out to sadirector@apamsa.org
August 24, 2026
Join us for an inspiring conversation with Dr. Rupa Juthani, MD, FAANS, a board-certified and fellowship-trained neurosurgeon specializing in neurooncolology about her journey through medicine as a south asian woman. Beyond the operating room, Dr. Juthani is a physician educator, TEDx speaker, mother, and prominent medical content creator known online as @braintumorsurgeon.
Disparities in South Asian Health Video Series
South Asian Mindful Drink Recipes
Lassi’s been around for about 5,000 years. It didn’t need a rebrand, a trend cycle, or a big marketing push — it just kept existing, through Mughal rule, Afghan rule, British colonialism, all of it. No one ever tried to commercialize it because there was nothing to profit from. It just stayed what it was: a drink people made at home, for each other.
Sweet with cardamom and rose water, or salty with cumin and black salt. Both are correct. Fight me.
Chai has a rougher history than people realize. The British cleared land and built plantations across Assam and Darjeeling to supply tea back home, using indentured and displaced labor to do it. Indians weren’t even the intended market. Chai only became “chai” once street vendors took the low-grade leaf they were handed and added milk, sugar, and their own spices to it.
So when you drink chai, you’re kind of drinking an act of resistance, disguised as a comfort drink.
This one’s not like the others. It’s pink, it’s salty, and it comes from Central Asian trade routes rather than the usual chai lineage, it’s genuinely closer to Tibetan butter tea than to masala chai.
In Kashmir, it shows up at weddings, funerals, and as the first thing you offer a guest. It’s outlasted the Mughals, the Sikh empire, the Dogras, and the British, mostly because no outside power ever cared enough to try to change it.
Turmeric milk carries about 3,000 years of Ayurvedic tradition, used for everything from inflammation to wound care long before Western medicine took any interest in it. During the colonial period it was often dismissed outright, only to resurface decades later in the West as a wellness trend.
So next time you see “”golden milk”” on a café menu, know the tradition goes back a lot further than the trend.
