Asian Fortune Your source for all things Asian American
By Vania Cao
Asian Americans are a diverse population, composed of people from every part of the socio-economic spectrum and scattered across different locales, and often face challenges in receiving appropriate attention from U.S. government agencies in regards to proper health care. In particular, certain ethnic groups have needs and concerns which can become obscured by those of larger, more populated groups, due to the way in which health status data has been collected in the past. Recently, there have been active efforts within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and other government agencies to disaggregate the old conglomerate of “Asian American” statistics, and break them down into more accurate and representative ethnic groups.
The lack of statistically measurable health data for low density Asian American populations has led to a push for improvements in health data collection, in order to better address the health and wellbeing of all Asian American citizens. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (NHPIs) comprise only 0.4% of the total United States population, and as such are not sufficiently sampled within national population-based health surveys. What is known about this population is that they are a group at a higher risk of chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity compared to other groups, coupled with a tendency to underutilize health care services, which adds up to a concerning trend.
To address the lack of data on this ethnic group, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has teamed up with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to announce the Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander National Health Interview Survey, which will gather information from 4,000 NHPI households, starting in February 2014. This is the first ever attempt to directly gain a better understanding of the health and health care issues which affect this ethnic minority group. These surveys will be carried out with the confidentiality assured under the Public Health Service Act, and the information given during the survey will be used only for research and statistical analyses.
This unprecedented project aims to bring more attention to under-represented Asian Americans, and to allow the HHS to reach another milestone in its implementation of the Action Plan to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities.
