Health Disparities Amongst the Asian American Community

 Health Disparities Amongst the Asian American Community

The Asian American community experiences significant gaps in health outcomes and indicators. Cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hepatitis B, mental health, osteoporosis, and tobacco use are a few of the more common health issues in the Asian American community. 

Cancer: The leading cause of death among Asian Americans. 

Cardiovascular Disease: The second leading cause of death among Asian Americans. 

Diabetes: Affects approximately 20% of Asian Americans, and an estimated 32% of Asian Americans have pre-diabetes (1). 

Hepatitis B: Despite making just 5% of the country's total population, Asian Americans contribute to more than half of the country's chronic Hepatitis B cases. According to estimates, 1 in 12 Asian Americans have hepatitis B (2). 

Mental Health: Among women ages 15-24, Asian Americans have the highest suicide mortality rates across all racial and ethnic groups (3). 

Osteoporosis: Due to a number of risk factors, including reduced body weight, inadequate calcium intake, and lactose intolerance, to name a few, Asian American women are more likely to develop osteoporosis (4). 

Tobacco Use: Relatively 1 in 11 Asian American adults smoke cigarettes. An estimated 1 in 7 Asian American men smoke cigarettes (5). 

Asian Americans experience many health disparities, and people must be educated on this matter, as many are unaware of their health risks. Many Asian Americans are at high risk of these diseases due to their culture, genetics, and healthcare inequalities. When speaking with a fellow Asian American, Daniel, he expressed concern that his parents are at such high risk of many diseases. He shared with me that cancer is common in his family and wants to spread awareness to others that cancer is way more common in Asian American communities than many believe. Stomach and liver cancer are the most common types among Asian Americans. 

Moreover, Stephanie and Jessica, two more fellow Asian Americans, expressed their gratitude for joining this project. Along with Daniel, both were concerned they were not educated enough about their health. They were even more worried about future generations not knowing to care for their health throughout their lifetime. Educating the youth through older people of the Asian American community on their health is heavily critical because if fellow members of the Asian American community will not, no one will. 

Asian Americans who are uneducated about their health are at a higher risk of obtaining a disease and are also at risk of having a provider that does not understand their health. The Asian American community, similar to other minority communities, has a high risk of healthcare inequalities. Healthcare inequalities include discrimination, racism, language barriers, and cultural differences. 

Daniel, Stephanie, Jessica, and I, all shared similar experiences with our health. We are all pre-diabetic and were not aware of our high risk for diabetes until the age of 16 years and older. We all felt we were told very late and could not practice healthy habits in our youth to prevent such measures. Diabetes is obtainable through genetics and environmental factors, and the Asian American youth needs to be aware of this risk to implement healthy habits into their lifestyle. It is never too late to start healthy habits. The older generations in the Asian American community should know they can decrease their chances of obtaining diseases through healthy lifestyle changes. 

Why does this social issue matter to me? 

Educating the Asian American community on their health disparities is important to me because I struggled for years to understand my health, and I know many others are undergoing the same journey. Many Asian Americans are not educated on their health disparities due to the lack of resources in their community. Healthcare inequalities that Asian Americans experience are caused by racism and discrimination, language barriers, and lack of experience in healthcare settings. Resources such as language classes, social worker representatives, brochures in different languages, and healthcare providers that are educated on the health disparities of the Asian American community should be accessible to them.  

What are some solutions to this social issue?

• Talk openly about health risks with your family and friends. 
• In Asian American culture, health problems are shameful; however, by talking openly about them with family and friends, it will help build a sense of community for those that are in need of a support system. 
• Spread awareness about community healthcare programs that offer online forums that provide information on health risks and the preventive measures that can be done. 
• Many are fearful of going to healthcare environments due to their lack of experience and knowledge. Online forums about common health issues people in the Asian American community experience will help others in understanding how to communicate their health to providers.

       

Members of the Asian American Community

*all members involved want respect for their privacy*

Daniel, 21 years, Korean

Occupation: Full-time student

Stephanie, 22 years, Hmong and Chinese

Occupation: Full-time student

Jessica, 21 years, Filipino and Lao

Occupation: Full-time student

Sources:

1. Joslin Diabetes Center, Harvard Medical School Affiliate, “One in Two Asian Americans Develop Diabetes or Pre-diabetes in Their Lifetime”: https://aadi.joslin.org/en/diabetes-mellitus-in-asian-americans

2. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and Chronic Hepatitis B: https://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis/populations/api.htm

3. Xing, Jun, and Chloe Chunyan Cheng. Beyond the Model Minority: Asian American Communities and Social Justice Education. Cognella, Inc., 2019.

4. National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, “Osteoporosis and Asian American Women”: https://www.bones.nih.gov/health-info/bone/osteoporosis/background/asian-american-women

5. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Tips From Former Smokers: Asian Americans”: https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/campaign/tips/groups/asian-american.html

Our Garden

                                                              Our Garden:

Written by: Alex Lopez, 4.13.2023

           

     Greetings to anyone who is reading this blog, my name is Alex Lopez. A neighborhood has serval aspects that tie it together. Whether through talking to your neighbors or hosting events in said place, this is what a community is. Thus, I want to talk about one aspect that, in my opinion, gets underlooked. This would be community gardens, which I'm an active member. They provide many benefits but the major problem they face is the lack of them. What I mean is that there isn't more effort in promoting them which leads to the city not wanting to fund them. In this article, I'll be discussing why they are important for any community, both financially and environmentally.

          History of Community Gardens

    Community Gardens, as the name implies, are gardens built by a community. Usually, these are built within neighborhoods. For a brief history of them, they first began to be popularized during the 1890s. This was a direct result of the economic recession at the time. One of the earliest documented gardens was in Detriot.

Mayor Pingree (fourth from left) poses for a picture with one of the gardeners (right) in 1896.

        A man named Mayor Pingree first proposed the idea of using vacant lots in order to help those affected by the recession. Specifically, as quoted from the Smithsonian Community Gardens' website, 

"Known as “Pingree’s Potato Patches,” the program provided unemployed workers with plots of land on vacant city lots, seeds, and tools, and instructions (printed in three languages) on how to cultivate gardens. While Pingree’s plan could not fulfill all the demand, it was successful in alleviating some of the hunger and poverty in Detroit.  The Detroit Plan was so successful that other cities from Boston to San Francisco developed similar plans. Participation in Detroit’s vacant lot gardening program, like most, tapered off by 1900 once the economy began to improve. Philadelphia, however, developed a particularly robust program that lasted into the 1920s " (Smithsonian Community Garden.org, 2023).

     It was from this point onwards that this design got improved. It would soon find itself in its modern forms. These mostly are found either in schools or, as stated before, in neighborhoods.

Problems Facing Community Gardens

There are many benefits to having a garden like this. Including but not limited to providing renewable sources of fresh products, helping with the ecosystem, and easy accessibility. As I stated earlier in this post, there are several complications as listed here:

• Getting Approval for a garden
• Securing Funding
• Deciding on what to plant
• Security

It's because of these factors discourage city officials from actually getting these projects off the ground. In fact, I can provide statistics of some states in California receive grants for these community gardens. The following is written by some members of Am J Public Health to the National Library of Medicine's website in 2003:

Am J Public Health, 2003

 Without these gardens, it causes a lack of resources for those with lower incomes. Not to mention how it'll lower CO2 levels.

                                                                Let's ask the people

To see how this issue affects the community, I asked a local member about their perspective, Yeho Lee.

Yeho Lee, 27

Yeho Lee is an active member of the garden community. In living an apartment with other tenets, they all share a garden that is accessible to the neighborhood. He provided this statement:

Conclusion

Now that we've gained an idea of how important these community gardens mean. They provide so many benefits that most people don't realize. That's why we must make more of an effort to have more of them, especially for lower-income neighborhoods. As I say, it takes a village to raise a child, but it takes a community to build a garden.

Sources

“Vacant Lot Gardens : Grown from the Past: A Short History of Community Gardening in the United States.” Community of Gardens, https://communityofgardens.si.edu/exhibits/show/historycommunitygardens/vacantlot.

Twiss, Joan, et al. “Community Gardens: Lessons Learned from California Healthy Cities and Communities.” American Journal of Public Health, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Sept. 2003, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447988/#:~:text=Community%20gardens%20enhance%20nutrition%20and,also%20emerge%20through%20community%20gardens.

Anti-Asian Hate Impacts on Mental Health and Relations in a Post-Pandemic World

The COVID-19 pandemic saw an upsurge in anti-Asian sentiments, agitating problematic xenophobic tensions lying just beneath the surface of Americans' lives. Here we hear the voices and calls to action from those impacted today.

Anti-Asian Sentiment at Large

    The pandemic brought about some of the best and some of the worst in people. Arguably, some of the worst had to do with issues of blatant racism and hate crimes committed against minority communities. A tragically salient example is that of the fatal Atlanta spa shootings in March 2021, where a white man left 8 dead: 1 white woman, 1 white man, and 6 Asian American women. These harrowing events, along with a sudden slew of others over the past 3 years, have shaken up Asian communities across the nation all over again. Despite the novelty of these highly violent crimes in against Asian Americans in the face of the pandemic, modern scholars like Shelley Sang-Hee Lee have produced comprehensive literature to argue that these sentiments and attacks against Asian Americans are nothing new. Works like Lee's A New History of Asian America illuminate the United States' omission of its historically turbulent racial relations with Asian Americans. Julian Clarence Levi Professor of Social Sciences Jennifer Lee at Columbia University struck upon the gaps in U.S. education on courses regarding racial relations and the absence of Asian Americans as group in their scope. The fact of the matter is that marginalization of Asian American communities and experiences as a whole can arguably be traced back to the very erasure of their footprint in American history. What implications does this historical exclusion of past generations have for the current generations today?

Survey data from the Pew Research Institute on perceived concerns of violence against Asian Americans revealed that about 21% of Asian Americans say they worry more or less daily that they might be threatened or attacked just because of their race and ethnicity. Despite President Biden signing COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, aimed to make reporting hate crimes easier and more accessible at local and state levels, this failed to address the urgency of hate crimes that occur at the daily, interpersonal level. As many as 2 in 5 Asian Americans feel community leaders and local officials are doing a poor job at raising awareness and protecting their communities. Further, most U.S. adults from this survey attributed their perceptions of rising violence against Asian Americans to former POTUS Donald Trump’s racist rhetoric and the impact of COVID-19 on the nation since 2020. Though other large-scale AAPI Momentive poll data reveal that hate crime reports decreased in early 2022, Asian Americans somehow also reported feeling more concerned about becoming a victim compared to other communities of color as well as more wariness when it comes to actually reporting hate crimes against them. This has to do with fear of societal retaliation and the consequences of unwanted social attention. There is a lot of stigma for Asian Americans when it comes to their victimization.

    New research also shows the detrimental impacts Asian Americans of all ages sustain. One study revealed that new generations of young Asian Americans are showing alarming declines in mental health due to perceptions of anti-Asian racism. Other literature revealed that older Asian American victims of hate crimes undergo and develop race-related traumatic stress that can lead to declines in long-term physiological and mental health. According to counseling psychologist William Ming Liu, Ph.D. for the American Psychological Association, Asian American communities today are constantly facing "an all-out assault." Current research by leading psychologists and clinicians is making strides toward determining things like the best form of therapy tailored directly to the needs of Asian Americans experiencing traumatic events today. APA's research has discovered an increasingly negative correlation between anti-Asian discrimination and anxiety and depressive symptoms, as well as sleep problems. This is an issue because research consistently shows that AAPI individuals already avoid accessing mental health services (more than any other racial group) due to a variety of clashing cultural beliefs. At this rate, without any fierce activism and reform, the xenophobia and renewed waves of Asian American hate due to COVID-19 will contribute to a fragmented, injured sense of self and identity, particularly among youth and young adults. These are the lives and minds we need to focus on inspiring and protecting.

    For me, the social issue of Anti-Asian hate, discrimination, and racism hits literally close to home. It breaks my heart to think of dear Asian friends and loved ones fearing for the lives of their loved ones in the exact same way I feared for my family's own when Trump called them all criminals. I grew up in the 626, San Gabriel Valley. I grew up in Rosemead, where it is predominantly East Asian. I still live here today. Some of my best friends growing up in school were Chinese or Vietnamese. My partner is Chinese, and so are his parents, his sibling, and his grandparents -- who I cherished very much during their life -- all Asian American. I've made the effort to dig deep and learn more about different Asian cultures inherent in U.S. history, their histories, and their identities within a nation that fails to educate its own members equitably. Being anything less than educated on the lives and legacies of Asian Americans would be to do a disservice to my loved ones in that community. Though I am Mexican American and have my own battles to pick with the legacies of my own immigrant parents, I realize the lives and legacies of my Asian American loved ones are not so different. I want to be a part of the social justice Asian Americans -- and all communities of color -- rightfully deserve. Here I offer my platform to them. Here are their voices.

_________________________________________

Question:  "Has Anti-Asian racism touched your life since the pandemic? How has it (e.g., violence, news on attacks, #StopAsianHate) affected or impacted you and your mental health?"

STATEMENT

Raydon Lam, 27: Chinese, Vietnamese

"I would say the anti-Asian discrimination has definitely affected not only my family but every single Asian all around the area. My parents have been scared to go out ever since the rise of asian hate crimes and the same goes for all my relatives who live within the area. My parents only go out when they need to buy necessities for home such as food and supplies. They haven’t been eating out at restaurants or going to parks to go for a nice walk. They’re not able to enjoy being out in public like they used to. My family have been living in constant fear that one of us would be brutally injured by even stepping foot into a Target. I myself have anxiety whenever my parents say they need to go to Costco to restock on groceries/house supplies because they could honestly be attacked whenever possible. It honestly sucks just having the thought of my parents not being able to enjoy their life like they used to and being stuck in constant fear of being attacked in public, and my parents vice versa. The whole anti-Asian discrimination definitely took a huge toll on all of our mental health because of the constant fear of being attacked. The #StopAsianHate movement has been great on educating and showing non-Asians that we have been suffering and I believe it has been great help, but the constant fear of being attacked has not went away. I believe that there are still people who do not care about Asians and the #StopAsianHate movement and they’ll still attack Asians because of the pandemic."

STATEMENT

Eliza Qi, 18: Chinese

"Living in a community that is predominantly minorities, specifically Asian has been a huge blessing during the pandemic and now because it felt like a safety bubble when the wave of Anti-Asian racism was happening. Watching news about hate crimes was extremely frustrating, knowing that a person who had power decided to misuse his platform, and fueled/encouraged Anti-Asian racism. Over time it affected my mental health as it became another factor towards my anxiety. I wasn’t anxious about myself, but for my family. Since the main targets in the Asian community were the elderly, I became extremely anxious every time my parents or grandparents went out. So i felt obligated to go out with them, just to feel at peace knowing I was there if anything were to happen. However, was great seeing communities rally to support one another during this time."

STATEMENT
Kyle Qi, 23: Chinese

“Seeing events was just shocking but I was also not surprised by it just given people being people. And this kind of thing has happened before with the 'Yellow Peril', a period of time where people were skeptical of Asian people, or didn’t like them because of wartime and immigrants 'taking jobs' and stuff. So now in this case with the [coronavirus] and people making assumptions and all that kind of stuff, there being violence is not surprising. Seeing the #StopAsianHate movement is cool, it’s interesting that people are speaking out, but it also reminds me a lot of #BlackLivesMatter and how people handled that kind of stuff. I think a big controversy surrounding BLM or how I saw it extending into #StopAsianHate is that it became more of a marketing tactic or something to call attention for… but the amount of change is pretty much not there from what I see. Like, people are speaking out about it but so what? What does that do? To incite action and change we can start at a more fundamental level, like education, right?  Maybe not older people now, but we can always educate the children and, you know, have them be the next stage in this change. I definitely think we can go deeper into history and even just covering the [melting pot] more because I don’t think that we’re taught as kids in school how diverse America is…I don’t remember being taught about any of that sh**. And so I don’t…you know, all of my understandings of race are from just my classmates, my peers, and from family, but there’s definitely more context to the minority groups in the states than just what we experienced directly. It would be good to learn more about it proactively.”

STATEMENT

Johanna Quach, 26: Vietnamese

"Anti-Asian discrimination has touched my life since the pandemic in a few ways. I come from a mixed family. My father’s side of the family is Vietnamese and during the pandemic it was a scary time for all of us. You didn’t know if you were going to be the next person targeted and end up on the news being another tragic story. We would see attacks against different Asian communities on the news and it was heart breaking. It would make me feel helpless and very upset that nothing was being done to stop all the unjust violence. As for my mental health it did not effect me in a big way. It however made me more cautious of the people I would come across and the way the spoke about the Asian community. I saw a lot of #StopAsianHate on social media, specifically instagram and it gave me a sense of pride in my culture that they all came together to protest, uplift, and support one another."

STATEMENT

Jenny Lee, 24: Chinese, Vietnamese

"I feel I’ve been affected by is hate crimes against Asian Americans in the United States. I am Chinese-American, and I grew up in a neighborhood where there weren't a lot of Asian people around me. I remember when I was younger, others would say racial slurs like 'Ling-Ling' or mock me for how 'small' my eyes were. Because I wasn’t aware of social issues when I was younger, I didn’t consider it as a big deal but now I understand that, it was racism. After it was revealed that COVID-19 originated in China, there have been many incidents of hate against Asians. This has caused my family and I to be extra cautious around others when we’re out. I remember seeing plenty of videos where Asians were being attacked for no reason and it’s really devastating to know that my people are being affected by these senseless acts."

The Importance of Civic Engagement

    According to Youth.gov (n.d.), civic engagement can be “defined as working to make a difference in the civic life of one’s community”, with different forms of it including volunteering, national service, and service learning. Another definition of civic engagement comes from the American Psychological Association (APA; 2009). APA defines civic engagement as “individual and collective actions designed to identify and address issues of public concern.” Furthermore, they posit that “Civic engagement can take many forms, from individual voluntarism to organizational involvement to electoral participation” (APA, 2009).

    My personal belief has come to be that civic engagement involves active participation in public activities to address community and/or societal issues. It involves people giving back to their communities and nation (granted, they have the agency and liberty to do so) through acts of service (e.g., volunteering, donating) and sociopolitical participation (e.g., voting). It seems most logical that the more proactive Americans are in the processes and structures surrounding them, the more progress that will be achieved. Social issues, among other issues inherent in modern society, need some of the most proactivity, effort, and community to achieve wins for communities who need it most. If we are to achieve any change for the voices collected here in this writing, an understanding of the multidimensional accessibility to civic engagement is key.

Authored by Angelica P. Morquecho

Resources and References

8 Dead in Atlanta Spa Shootings, With Fears of Anti-Asian Bias
AAPI Data|Momentive poll: American experiences with discrimination 2022
A New History of Asian America by Shelley Sang-Hee Lee
About a third of Asian Americans say they have changed their daily routine due to concerns over threats, attacks
Confronting the invisibility of anti-Asian racism
Stop Asian Hate - The NYC Commission on Human Rights
The mental health impact of anti-Asian racism
The mental health of Asian American adolescents and young adults amid the rise of anti-Asian racism
Xenophobia and Racism Against Asian Americans During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Mental Health Implications
https://youth.gov/youth-topics/civic-engagement-and-volunteeringLinks to an external site.https://www.apa.org/education-career/undergrad/civic-engagementLinks to an external site.