My name is Peter Hsu. I am a physician by training and I do currently practice medicine, which always prompts the question why politics. Since we are all busy, I will try to make it brief.
My clinical focus is in internal medicine and pediatric hematology/oncology (big words, whatever), but my research focus is actually in health policy, particularly looking at how Obamacare affects cancer patients. Now, Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act, in my opinion, is one of the best policies to be pushed forward in our generation. Yes, it needs modifications and tweaks, but it is definitely a very good first step.
Back to why politics, well, rather than doing health policy at a research or academic level, I did some soul searching and eventually wanted to influence health policy on a different level or platform, so I thought about politics. Now, a person like me, having no background in politics, as well as being a first generation immigrant to this great country at the age of 12, at which time when I spoke no English, I believe starting at the local level is the best option for me, so here I am, trying my hardest to get your number one vote just like all of my fellow candidate colleagues!
Alright, let me give you some more details about myself. I was born and raised in Taiwan. I came to the States when I was 12, along with my mother and younger brother, while my father stayed back in Taiwan to work in order to provide for us. I went through middle school, high school, college, and obtained a master’s degree in biology all in Southern California. Thereafter, I graduated from medical school and went through a combined Internal Medicine-Pediatrics residency program in Northeast Ohio. Following residency, I completed a fellowship in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology in Nashville, Tennessee. In 2020, I got a job at Boston Children’s Hospital and have been living in Cambridge since then. As of now, I work at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center as an attending physician and teach at Harvard Medical School.
If elected, I would like to expand mental health outreach and access to high-quality health care to more people, especially kids, teens, youth, adolescents, young adults, older folks, and folks from lower socioeconomic class. Affordable housing, bike lanes, education equity, climate justice, and closing racial and wealth gap are all very important, and I promise to work on all those with all of you if elected, so elect me! I do carry a few degrees behind my name (MD, MPH, MS, whatever), but I don’t believe degrees are the real reasons you should vote for me. Reasons you should vote for me:
- I am unbiased and my only goal is to make Cambridge better in the long run. I will actively listen to and work with everyone; using my profession as an analogy, I take care of every patient the way I would want my family to be taken care of, regardless of my feelings toward anything else.
- It is going to be really cool to have a physician on our City Council who is competent, unbiased, data-driven, and compassionate.
- I am one of the hardest working folks on earth and I will work hard for you and our City. However, I don’t just work hard, I am also a fun person, and I promise, together, we can have fun and achieve more for Cambridge.
- I am caring, empathetic, fair, reasonable, objective, and inclusive.
- As in medicine, I will be as transparent and honest to you as possible, including when I make a mistake.
We might not agree on everything, but I promise to work with you. I understand life is not perfect, but together we can make it better and go farther. I still have a lot to learn, but if elected, I promise to work for Cambridge and Cambridge only. I personally think the logics and rationale behind taking care of a patient versus our City are not that much different, so again, I think it would be really cool to have a physician on our City Council, but if you don’t agree, elect me, and we can debate on! Thanks for reading!
I am happily married (I think my wife/spouse/significant other is also) and we have two kids who are generally cute but, at times, more than what we desire to handle (we have decided, with our sons’ permission, to still keep them for now). My wife and kids currently live in Tennessee because of a pretty long story, but briefly, during my fellowship training, after our second son was born, my wife became a real estate agent (she always wanted to, but never got a chance). I don’t know how she did it, but somehow she found the perfect balance between having a successful career and a “peaceful” family.
When I found out I was coming to Cambridge/Boston for work, my wife and I had a deep discussion. Selfishly, I wanted her and the kids to come with me, but that would mean she would need to give up everything she established in Tennessee. Sure, she could re-start her real estate career here, but the truth was, working as a real estate agent is completely different than a physician. As a doctor, I can go work in any hospital and will very quickly adjust to the work environment. However, as they say in real estate, location is everything, so it is definitely much more difficult to transition her career than mine from Tennessee to Boston/Cambridge.
So, since I was not sure how long I was going to be in Cambridge/Boston, we decided that they would stay there and I would come here, and we did. Over the past almost 3 years, we facetime each other every day and plan trips from time to time. Please enjoy the pictures below!
