#disaggregated data

HAPPENING TODAY AT NOON! Please consider attending the following event if you are in New York:

Advancing Justice and Asian American Federation to Present New Data on Asian American Community in the Northeast

WHAT:  Asian Americans Advancing Justice and the Asian American Federation will present key findings from the New York section of a new report that documents the social and economic diversity of two of the fastest-growing racial groups in the region.

WHEN: TODAY, November 21, 2013, 12:00pm - 2:00pm WHERE:  Asia Society and Museum | 725 Park Avenue New York, NY 10021

WHY: The AANHPI communities are experiencing explosive growth in the Northeast, which is fueling a host of policy concerns including economic access and language barriers. The growth is leading to unprecedented levels of civic participation, making the AANHPI communities a key electorate in metropolitan New York.  ABOUT: A Community of Contrasts: Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders in the Northeast, 2013 compiles the latest data on growing AANHPI communities in New York, Boston and Philadelphia.  The following sponsors made the report and launch event possible: the Asia Society and Museum, the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation, the Chung Ying Tang Foundation, and Bank of America.

The Department of Health and Human Services is working to address health disparities among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders by providing disaggregated data.

Deputy Assistant Secretary for Minority Health Dr. Nadine Gracia, explained why disaggregated data is so important:

"In Vietnamese, Cambodian and Samoan women, you see some of the highest rates of cervical cancer.  If you look at the rates of the uninsured, Korean Americans have the highest rate among Asian Americans.  Having this type of disaggregated data helps us better identify disparities, particularly when they occur within a particular population.”

Having small sample sizes for Asian American and Pacific Islander subgroups is one challenge the department faces when trying to provide the best data to help our communities. One way to tackle this problem is to oversample, or take a larger sample of the population than normal based on their national percentile.

Guidelines for providing culturally competent health care access can be found here.

Read more of Vania Cao's article for Asian Fortune.

By Sadia Arshad, APIASF/GMS Scholar

In the spirit of this month's theme, I came across this article in Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, one of the nation's largest magazines on diversity in terms of race, gender, and sexual orientation of the student body and faculty in higher education.

The article reports that the largest public university system in the country, California's UC system, will expand the amount of AAPI identities from 8 to 23, a striking move to further demonstrate the diversity within the AAPI community and to also facilitate appropriate measures to increase enrollment of particular AAPI groups. One of the motivators for this move was to respond to the calls of AAPI higher education activists to represent the diversity of more major AAPI groups, especially considering that California has more AAPI students and AANAPISIs than any other state.

I feel like this would be a remarkable stepping stone in reducing the model minority myth in higher education and help to better serve more groups in the AAPI community. Personally, I feel as if the "Asian" check box is so vague; from China to Indonesia to Samoa, could only one box embody the entirety of AAPI diversity? Given my Pakistani and West Indian background, only the "Asian Indian" box is sometimes available, but it lumps all South Asians into the Asian Indian category without recognizing those of the diaspora or other South Asians who do not regularly identify as Indian.

By Charles Sasaki, Dean of Arts & Sciences, University of Hawai‘i – Kapi‘olani Community College

A recent study published by the Pew Charitable Trusts tells us that AAPIs, on the whole, are well-educated, rich, and happy. The thing is that the Pew report hides the sad truth that while some in our community are faring quite well, many are not. Aggregated data pits AAPI groups against one another and the sheer size of the largest AAPI communities obscures the daily realities of smaller, vibrant but struggling ethnic groups. Even here in my home state of Hawai‘i, indigenous Hawaiians, Filipinos, and Pacific Islanders have to work really hard to gain access to the basic resources needed to even begin to approach equity. We may be a happy bunch, but not everyone looks like the AAPIs in the Pew report.

We’re counting on our APIASF and GMS Scholars to get out there and educate America about our communities. I have great faith in this next generation of AAPI leaders!

QUESTION: TRUE or FALSE?: Levels of educational attainment are disproportionately distributed across AAPI ethnic groups.

ANSWER: TRUE.

As an aggregate it may appear that AAPIs are faring well educationally; however, when data on AAPIs is disaggregated by ethnicity, an entirely different story unfolds. There is a wide distribution in educational attainment across AAPI sub-groups. According to the 2000 U.S. Census data on individuals aged 25 and older, only 13.8% Pacific Islanders have at least a bachelor’s degree in comparison to 24.4% of the total population and 44.1% of Asian Americans. Within the Pacific Islander community, Tongans (8.6%), Samoans (10.5%), and Fijians (8.8%) have the lowest percentages. Asian American sub-groups such as Southeast Asians tend to have lower levels of postsecondary educational attainment. If the data is disaggregated even further within this Southeast Asian group alone, the postsecondary education attainment for Hmongs is about 7.5%, Cambodians at 9.2%, Laotian at 7.7%, and Vietnamese at 19.4%. These are just examples of the varied levels of postsecondary education attainment rates within the larger AAPI umbrella.

For more information regarding AAPIs and education, check out the CARE Reports.