A Refugee Doctor Built the Clinic His Younger Self Needed

Dr. Binh Phung, Founder of Xavier Medical Clinic

Photo courtesy of Saint Francis Health System

Binh Phung was nine years old when he arrived in the U.S. as a refugee from Vietnam in 1993, resettled through the Orderly Departure Program after his father spent eight years imprisoned following the Vietnam War. He grew up to become a pediatrician — and in 2021, he opened the kind of clinic his own family could have used.

Xavier Medical Clinic in Tulsa, Oklahoma, offers free care to families who might otherwise go without it. Phung and a team of volunteers began by serving Afghan refugee families — Oklahoma resettled roughly 1,800 of them — providing primary care, translation, and medication assistance. The clinic has since expanded to migrant families from Honduras, Venezuela, and Guatemala, handing out everything from hygiene products and school supplies to bicycles.

Phung, now an associate professor at Oklahoma State University’s Center for Health Sciences, sums up why the work matters simply: “The refugee child is me.”

Two decades after arriving with almost nothing, he built the safety net he once needed for a new generation of families starting over in Oklahoma.