April 23, 2009
New Report Assesses Health Disparities Among California's Asian Populations
The most comprehensive assessment of health disparities among the state's diverse Asian populations was released in April by California Assemblymember Mike Eng and the California Asian Pacific Islander Joint Legislative Caucus.
One of the report's authors, Winston Tseng, a research scientist at the Health Research for Action Center at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, said that lack of data about Asians makes it difficult to understand the health risks of different Asian subgroups. For example, most medical research is based on white populations, which doesn't apply the same way to Asians. It doesn't explain why Asians in California are dying from cancer at a rate higher than any other racial group, or why "Native Hawaiians have the highest rate of stomach and uterine cancer while liver cancer disproportionately strikes the Vietnamese, Korean, and Chinese populations." Nor does it explain why Vietnamese, who tend to be thin, have high rates of diabetes.
According to "The State of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Health in California Report," Asians now comprise 14% of the state's population. The report's authors, all members of the University's AAPI Policy Multi-Campus Research Program, said that Asians are usually combined into one or two large racial categories. Doing so doesn't differentiate between more than a dozen ethnic subgroups, which "differ significantly from one another in terms of demographics, health status, and health care needs."
Tseng says, "There is a lot more work to be done. Across California and nationally, there is still a lack of AANHPI health data and programs that adequately support health care delivery among AANHPIs." He believes the Asian Pacific Islander Joint Legislative Caucus will support further research "to more effectively guide policy formation, address systematic causes of health disparities, and ultimately reduce the disease burden and costs incurred by the state."
California Program on Access to Care (CPAC) was the principal funder of the report, providing a $15,000 grant last spring. CPAC will be drawing on this report to produce its own broad ranging health report for Asians that will be released as part of series of four "State of Health" reports addressing health disparities for California's four major ethnic groups: Asian Pacific Islanders, Latinos, African Americans, and Native Americans. All four "State of Health" reports will be completed in spring of 2010.