Everyday she’s working (which is most days) Sarorng “Rorng” Sorn strives to make the invisible visible. As Language Access Coordinator for the City of Philadelphia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services, Sorn connects the city’s least seen populations — Philadelphians from places where English is not the primary language and their families — with the least visible of health services — mental and behavioral. The barriers she and her staff work to overcome are formidable. The most obvious: the 80 or so ethnic languages spoken by 15 percent of the city’s population.
But Sorn’s life experience has eminently equipped her to connect with immigrants, especially traumatized immigrants. Not only is she a Cambodian refugee who experienced more horrors as a young child than most adults will experience in a lifetime, but she is also a born carer, connector — and someone for whom honesty, warmth and service are the only options.
“She’s got this energy — a kind energy — that just she exudes,” says longtime friend and collaborator, Court of Common Pleas Judge Stella Tsai. “Her kindness, her generosity, her spirit, her intelligence — she just brings all those qualities together. It’s hard not to admire somebody like that.”
For her nine-plus years of work to ensure thousands of Philadelphians can access healthcare that heals their minds, Sorn is one of this year’s 2025 Integrity Icons. Integrity Icon is a program The Citizen has run in partnership with the nonprofit Accountability Lab since 2020. The goal of the program is to shine a spotlight on city workers who uphold the highest standards of integrity — helping to inspire others to do the same. The Citizen will be honoring Sorn, along with this year’s four other winners, at a party on May 22 at Fitler Club Ballroom. (All are welcome, but you must RSVP in advance here.)
From wartime to honor roll
It’s impossible to talk about Sorn’s present without first sharing her past. Born in Cambodia during the Vietnam War, she and her family experienced bombings, extreme hunger, illness and forced labor. After the Khmer Rouge took Sorn’s parents away to a work camp, eight-year-old Sorn became the caregiver for her two-year-old sister, who, while sick and without access to medical care, died in her arms. “I was so devastated I couldn’t even cry,” Sorn wrote in a personal essay for WHYY.
A few years later, her family fled through dense jungle, dodged landmines and bullets, to reach a United Nations refugee camp in Thailand. There, for the first time, at age 11, Sorn went to school and learned to read. (A strong and enthusiastic reader, she quickly turned to teaching her new skill to other children.) At age 16, she acquired her nursing certificate, which she used to care for others in the camp. This work, she says, brought her “tremendous fulfillment and happiness.”
“Our purpose was to listen and understand their challenges, their struggles and their perceptions around mental and behavioral health.” — Rorng Sorn
Three years later, the United States accepted her family’s request for refugee status. Their one distant relative in the U.S. was in Philadelphia. They moved into a studio apartment, then a three-bedroom home, in South Philly. Sorn worked nights in a chicken factory, while learning English at South Philadelphia High School. Upon graduating — with honors — she took a job as an interpreter and medical clerk at Philadelphia Health Centers and enrolled in CCP. She was the first in her family to attend college.
Within a decade, Sorn had a degree, a family (including two sons), a house of her own, and a career she summarizes as, “coalition building, direct service and advocacy.”
A career strengthening community
Sorn first worked as a community health educator for Einstein Health, training healthcare providers on cultural sensitivity and Southeast Asian moms-to-be on preventing infant mortality. She went on to serve as a health advocate for the Maternity Care Coalition, then a field coordinator for the Washington, D.C.-based Southeast Asia Resource Center.
In 2001, she joined the Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia (CAGP), the nonprofit where her own family sought support when they were new to the States. She remembers, “Volunteers were able to assist us in finding jobs, going to the grocery, introducing us to the temple, teaching us how to drive — very important steps toward self-sufficiency.”
At CAGP, she raised funds and more than quintupled the number of Khmer residents served. In 2008, she became the organization’s executive director, just in time for the Great Recession. Sorn made sure they continued to provide services despite furloughs, layoffs and cutbacks, and took a 75 percent salary reduction. Post-recession, she stayed on to help the nonprofit rebuild. Today, CAGP is thriving with three locations, including one in South Philadelphia with a full-service daycare. Sorn serves on the board.
CAGP Executive Director Sarun Chan worked under Sorn as director of youth programs. He watched his boss become an example to the students he worked with, who, now in their 30s, still ask after her. “Rorng laid a very strong foundation of visibility for our community,” he says. Chan recalls a speech Sorn made, when she shared a “simple” but especially resonant message.
“Her kindness, her generosity, her spirit, her intelligence — she just brings all those qualities together. It’s hard not to admire somebody like that.” — Judge Stella Tsai, Court of Common Pleas
“Our community, we’re genocide survivors; we’re war survivors from Vietnam,” he says. He recalls Sorn’s message: “When we’re successful, we don’t just up and leave our city or our neighborhoods. When we’re successful as individuals, it’s for our family; it’s for our community as a whole.”
Tsai first met her friend about two decades ago, while working for the City. Sorn was advocating for Khmer residents in North Philadelphia who were having trouble finding their polling places and reading their ballots. Tsai and Sorn quickly recognized each as a no-nonsense problem solver.
“We ended up bringing voting machines to community meetings, so people could test them out before they voted,” Tsai says. Since the Voting Rights Act did not require the City to provide Khmer interpretation, the duo connected with City Commissioners. Today, Philadelphia publishes voting materials not just in Spanish and Mandarin, as required by law, but also in Khmer, Korean, Polish, Russian and Vietnamese.
When Mayor Michael Nutter’s administration was looking for someone to become a liaison for Philadelphia’s Asian community, Sorn seemed a natural choice. She’d already built trust among community members, developed contacts in city and state government, and had working relationships with all manner of nonprofit organizations, especially those geared toward immigrants. She served on the Mayor’s Commission for Asian American Affairs for seven years.
A focus on mental health
In 2016, the mayors changed, and Sorn went to work for an expanded diverse population in a different area of city government, the Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services (DBHIDS). The new role required Sorn to focus on improving access to mental and behavioral healthcare for Philadelphia immigrants — about 232,0000 people — and their families. The need was, and is, great.
Ten years ago, Psychiatry Online published a report that showed immigrants in the U.S. “face challenging post-migration circumstances, such as separation from family, cultural and linguistic barriers, and adjustment to a new, and sometimes unwelcoming, environment. These stressors may exacerbate existing mental health problems or initiate new concerns.” Despite reporting much higher rates — up to 50 percent, compared to the American average of just over 8 percent — of depression, foreign-born residents receive mental health services much smaller (typically single-digit) percentages, as compared to the overall U.S. average of 13 percent. They also have higher rates of trauma.
To tackle this disparity locally, Sorn started out by doing what she always does: Getting outside her office and meeting folks. “Some people we met in a hair salon. Some, we met in a backyard. Some we met in a church. Some we met in the house of refugees, or a recreational center — you name it,” she says. “Our purpose was to listen and understand their challenges, their struggles and their perceptions around mental and behavioral health.”
“Rorng is not above any sort of work.” — Anthony McLaughlin, DBHIDS
In more than 50 sessions for 1,200 people from 85 individual ethnic groups, “We learned that in every community, stigma is a huge barrier to services, and, next, the language and cultural barriers, and understanding the services and navigating to the system,” Sorn says. “A very limited number of providers have multilingual staff.”
Just as important, Sorn’s team discovered a strong desire to know more about mental and behavioral wellness. “Many communities would ask that we come and do more listening or talking, to have an open conversation to be able to understand more,” she says. “They also recommended that we do workshops or education around behavioral health and intellectual disability.”
Teaching others to care
Tsai describes her friend’s solution as classic Rorng. “She is a person who will teach people how to, as they say, fish.”
Sorn came up with the Immigrant Wellness Academy, a free, 10-week course to educate people who are already working with immigrant communities in mental health awareness and advocacy, and knowledge of the city’s offerings. She first presented the idea to Anthony McLaughlin, DBHIDS Chief of Innovation and Effectiveness.
“She brought it up as a way to reach communities,” McLaughlin remembers. When told there was no budget for such an undertaking, she found funding from community partners, the Mayor’s Office, and the City’s Office of Innovation, and DIYed it.
“Rorng is not above any sort of work,” he says. “She was involved in every step of the process, from coordinating trainers, speakers, internal and external partners, payments, administration, logistics, reporting out … She developed the application and the interview and vetting process.”
Now in its third year, the Academy has graduated three cohorts of trainees in mental and behavioral health access. (Sorn holds an annual graduation ceremony for them at City Hall.) Some graduates, from the Ethiopian diaspora, have developed their own mental health council.
“My main goal right now is to support them, so they can be healthy, and be able to work and go to school and be with their family,” she says. Sorn deeply understands: For many of these newcomers, an ordinary life is a better life. Hers is.
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