User:Tiwong11/Health status of Asian Americans

Policy approaches
Up to the 1990s, there was very little research into Asian American health. Until 2003, the 23 federal health surveys available aggregated data under the label Asian or Pacific Islander, making data essentially useless. Between 1986 and 2000, only 0.2% of federal grants were directed towards Asian American health and research.

With warnings coming in from researchers, the Asian American and Pacific Islander community worked to establish institutions for Asian American and Pacific Islander health research. New York University School of Medicine established the Center for the Study of Asian American Health in 2003 in response. The National Cancer Institute funded the Asian American Network for Cancer Awareness, Research, and Tobacco at University of California Davis in 2005. Asian American and Pacific Islander health initiatives were funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services through institutions such as the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Office of Minority Health.

The federal government has also begun reporting Asian American census data in separate ethnic groups. The US Census Bureau collects data on 25 Asian and 23 Pacific Islander subgroups. However, many of the NIH's surveys are erratic in their labeling of ethnic groups of Asian Americans, with some having different number of ethnic groups. Both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have signed executive orders to establish the President's Advisory Commission on Asian American Pacific Islanders. The committee, in 2003, advised the creation of a national plan for the improvement of health in Asian and Pacific Islander communities. Policy measures that specifically target Asian Americans, however, are yet to be seen on the federal level. Uehara et al. (1994), as well as others, argues that treating Asian Americans as a single category can lead to inaccurate conclusions, but others argue that this homogenization is necessary in this neoliberal state, and it is just not feasible to evaluate data and provide specific healthcare to every single Asian minority.

Grassroots movements
With the lack of policy initiatives from the government, Asian Americans have increasingly taken to grassroots movements to improve their health status.

Photographer Corky Lee created a healthcare fair in New York's Chinatown in 1971 that provided free services for conditions like tuberculosis testing, sexually transmitted infections, and lead poisoning. He was inspired by social service programs created by the Black Panthers.

The Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum (APIAHF), established in 1986, has worked to influence policy and mobilize individuals to improve Asian and Pacific Islander health. Among its many activities, APIAHF has a history of filing briefs of amicus curiae in support of various court cases. Its most recent filing is a historic amicus brief in support of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in February 2012 to the Supreme Court for the case Florida v. United States Department of Health and Human Services. On behalf of 39 organizations dedicated to improving the health of Asian and Pacific Islander communities, the APIAHF brief details the needs of the Asian American community.

Because of insurance, costs, and a variety of other reasons, the types of services needed to meet the needs of Asian minority communities are not usually offered at private hospitals. Federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) are legally mandated to provide primary care for medically underserved communities, and thus are ideal settings to implement and provide culturally and linguistically inclusive services to Asian immigrant communities. Asian activists and organizations were influenced by the Black Panther Party’s work, especially surrounding community healthcare services and advocacy for underserved populations in Oakland and within the area during times of civil unrest and movements such as Civil Rights, Yellow Power, United Farm Workers Movement, Third World Liberation Front, etc. Movements such as these, as well as “the War on Poverty programs …  incentivized non-black minority community organizers to form panethnic [community service organizations] to gain access to state resources and serve the economically disadvantaged in their communities.” These civil rights movements were an inspiration for subsequent social justice movements. In response to an increasingly neoliberal and multicultural state that saw race as a neutral cultural concept, with the government lumping all Asian identities together in official censuses and data, “in the late 1960s, Asian American college and community activists of diverse racial backgrounds rallied around a deliberately political and strategic panethnic “Asian American” identity that was grounded in a radical political consciousness.” Asian Americans included Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, Pacific Islander, etc. The “state concessions (funding) to minority demands offered eager second- and third-generation Asian American activists new opportunities to establish community-based organizations to serve the people”, and inspired by the civil rights movements and resulting ethnic power movements, these activists “sought to channel these new state funds into social service programs for child care, youth, affordable senior citizen housing, and health care.”

Some of these activists founded Asian Health Services, a Community Health Center that strives to provide affordable, accessible healthcare to immigrant (mostly Asian) communities in the Oakland area. Asian Health Services focuses its work largely on serving those who are historically marginalized (communities of color, non-English speaking, immigrants/refugees, etc).