The Racial Divide In Achieving Health Equality

• Vietnamese American women have cervical cancer rates about five times that of non-Latino white women.
• Vietnamese American men have the highest rate of liver and bile duct among all ethnic groups and both genders. They have 10 times the likelihood of these cancers than non-Latino white men.
• Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have the highest rates of tuberculosis among all racial groups.
• Hepatitis B is twice more likely to occur in an Asian American than any other acial group.
• Asian Americans have a higher rate of diabetes than whites.

This is one part of a phenomenon known as health disparity—that is, a disproportionate difference in the health status of different populations. In the above examples, these populations happen to be separated by race.

Social scientists and public health experts have identified a number of factors and the interaction of these factors that contribute to health disparity, such as socioeconomic status, education, gender, race, biological and genetic makeup, social and physical environments, personal behavior and practices, health infrastructure and services, and culture. Asian Americans share similar risk factors that make them more vulnerable and therefore more likely to develop certain diseases than others.

The other side of health disparity
Now consider another set of current health statistics:
• Asian Americans are almost twice more likely than whites to lack treatment or injury care as soon as needed
• _Asian Americans are almost twice more likely than whites to lack treatment for serious mental illness
• Asian Americans are least likely out of whites, Latinos, and African Americans to have had cancer screenings such as a mammogram (for breast cancer), a Pap smear test (for cervical cancer), or a fecal occult blood test (for colon and rectum cancer)
• Asian Americans are more likely than whites to lack health insurance coverage
• Asian Americans elders with daily pain are more likely to be left untreated in nursing homes than that of whites, Latinos, and American Indians.

These statistics demonstrate another side of health disparity, that of the difference in the access or utilization of healthcare services and a difference in the quality of care obtained by particular individuals or groups. Health disparity is a highly politicized term that essentially means inequality or inequity in healthcare services. It’s so political that Americans use the term “health disparity,” whereas most countries outside of the US would simply say “health inequality.” Why is that? When you hear “health inequality,” it conjures up images of injustices. As ideological Americans, we believe that health care should not differ by race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, or geographical location. Yet minorities receive different quality of care than do whites. An individual’s race and/or ethnicity can influence which diseases she develops; but it does not lead to the difference in the quality of care she receives.

Asian Americans lost in the shuffle of numbers


Asian Americans face an additional challenge, as we are effectively marginalized in the national racial and ethnic health disparity debate. A general scan of the research leads me to conclude that many statistics either do not include Asian Americans in measuring health outcomes for disparities, and/or misleadingly suggest that Asian Americans display similar health outcomes than that of whites. I concluded that the latter caused the former: Some statistics display a smaller differential between access, treatment and outcomes between Asian Americans and whites. Subsequently, scientists and their funders believe that health disparity between the two groups is too insignificant to matter.

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