Where VapoRub Meets Prescriptions: Health, Culture, and the Borderlands Experience

By: Karen Alyza Baeza

Growing up in a border town meant living between two worlds: two languages, two nations, and two healthcare systems. In this space of convergence, health was never defined by a single tradition but by the blending of cultures that shaped how families sought healing and care.

I grew up knowing that 7UP, saltine crackers, and Vicks VapoRub could cure almost anything. These remedies were staples in my household, passed down through generations and trusted as symbols of care and comfort. Yet they existed alongside annual checkups, prescriptions, and clinical diagnoses rooted in American biomedical practices. This coexistence of traditional and Western medicine reflected a uniquely borderlands experience: one where healing was shaped by both cultural heritage and institutional systems.

Living in a border community also meant witnessing how healthcare access differed dramatically between Mexico and the United States. Families often crossed national lines for affordable medications, dental procedures, and routine care, creating a transnational approach to health born out of necessity. Such practices underscore the structural inequities embedded within both systems and reveal how marginalized communities adapt with resilience and ingenuity.

As pioneering physician and public health advocate Helen Rodríguez-Trías asserted:

“We cannot achieve a healthier us without achieving a healthier, more equitable health care system, and ultimately, a more equitable society.”

Her words resonate profoundly in the borderlands, where disparities in cost, access, and cultural competence shape health outcomes for Latinx populations. These inequities highlight the urgent need for healthcare systems that acknowledge and integrate diverse cultural traditions while ensuring equitable access to care.

My work at the Center for the Critical Study of the Health of Latinx Communities seeks to illuminate these realities. Through archival research, oral histories, and community engagement, the Center documents the structural barriers affecting Latinx communities and amplifies voices historically excluded from mainstream narratives. By reframing health as a human right, this work bridges scholarship with activism to advance systemic change.

Equally critical to this mission is the role of culturally responsive media. In my interview with Samuel Orozco, he emphasized how community-based journalism empowers underserved populations. He explained that Radio Bilingüe supports Latinx communities through programs such as “Conozca Sus Derechos”, which provide essential legal and civic information. He also stressed the importance of addressing misinformation, noting the organization’s efforts to “combat disinformation… especially in the field of health.” By delivering accurate, accessible information, community media strengthens public trust and promotes informed decision-making.

Orozco further underscored the cultural dimension of health through a guiding principle deeply rooted in Latinx traditions: la cultura cura; culture heals. This philosophy reflects the lived realities of border communities, where ancestral knowledge, language, and collective care coexist with modern medical practices.

The duality of health in the United States and Mexico ultimately reveals a powerful truth: healing in the borderlands is not confined to one system or tradition. Instead, it emerges from the blending of cultures, the resilience of communities, and the pursuit of equitable care across national boundaries.

To understand healthcare in the borderlands is to recognize that cultural hybridity is not a barrier but a strength. But for me, it is also something more personal. It is the way I learned to understand care before I ever learned the word “healthcare.” It is the reason I can move between systems, languages, and expectations, but also the reason I see so clearly where those systems fall short.

That awareness is what I carry into my work now. Not just the knowledge of disparities, but the memory of what it felt like to rely on both worlds at once. The comfort of what was passed down to me, and the reality of what was often out of reach. Because for communities like mine, healing has never been about choosing one system over the other. It has always been about navigating both: the 7up, the saltine crackers, and the Vicks VapoRub sitting beside prescribed medications from a doctor’s office; the home remedies that comfort us alongside the clinical care we depend on.

It is in that coexistence between tradition and institution, culture and system, where our understanding of health truly lives. And it is from that space that I now see the work ahead: not to separate these words, but to build systems that recognize them, respect them, and ensure that no one has to cross borders, literal or cultural, just to be cared for.

Bibliography

Center for the Critical Study of the Health of Latinx Communities. Archival and Research Materials on Latinx Health Equity. University of California, Berkeley.

Samuel Orozco. Interview by Karen Baeza. 2026.

Helen Rodríguez-Trías. Public health speeches and advocacy writings.

Pan American Health Organization. Health in the Americas: United States–Mexico Border Region. Washington, D.C.

World Health Organization. Social Determinants of Health. Geneva: WHO.