Vaccines. Abortion. Mental Health. Conversations about health topics like these often stir deep emotions, challenge beliefs, and—most concerning of all—test relationships.

Whether you’re a parent trying to protect your family, a caregiver facing tough decisions, a grieving friend searching for the right words, or a healthcare professional dealing with life-or-death matters, you’ve felt the strain of difficult health conversations.

In Debunk with Empathy, Wan Naszeerah—a Nusantara infodemiologist and public health advocate—offers a fresh approach to these challenges.

Drawing from her lived experiences as a stateless-born Malay woman raised amidst the Nusantara’s plurality of traditional and modern healing practices, and her education at Yale and UC Berkeley, Naszeerah invites readers to embrace empathy—not as a buzzword, but as a skill rooted in the hati, the heart-mind connection central to Nusantara wisdom.

Talking about health well is less about what you know than about how you make people feel. And feeling is hard to teach, even to people who mean well.

Health lives in the middle of everything. Your aging parents make choices you would not have made. Your partner cannot raise the one topic you are tender about. Your child is struggling, and would rather not talk to you about it.

Health matters this much, and being right and being heard turn out to be two different skills. Most of us only ever practiced the first. So we correct. We rush to win.

In Debunk with Empathy, Dr. Wan Naszeerah shows how anyone can stay in these hard health conversations without losing the relationship. The stateless-born public health scientist introduces you to some of the most unforgettable characters, and the lessons they carry, from Southeast Asia's Nusantara sociocultural sphere, where old and new ways of healing have long lived side by side, in tension and in love.

A Heartfelt Thank You to Those Who Supported This Book

This book would not have been possible without the generosity and belief of its early backers. See who made it possible.

Each month, I explore a trending health topic—one that involves emotions, uncertainty, or misinformation (sometimes all three).

Along with that, I share simple, practical ways to approach these conversations with confidence and empathy.

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