hat do a Hmong service member, an Indian student and a Korean Midwesterner all have in common? From a public health perspective, they are all the same: Asian American.

Health data have historically lumped all Asian American people together, obscuring distinct health disparities and leaving vulnerable communities neglected by researchers and policymakers. Asian American communities are essentially averaged-out into invisibility: Good health for some masks poor health for others.

For instance, in July 2020, the Los Angeles Times reported on the alarming and disproportionate rate at which Filipino Americans, many of whom are health care workers, were dying of Covid-19 in California. The state is home to a majority of the country’s 4.2 million Filipino American population. At the time, the group accounted for at least 35 percent of Covid-19 deaths among Asian Americans in the state, and that translated to a 40 percent mortality rate for Filipino Americans compared to the national 3.7 percent death rate.

But that’s just one state, and it happens to be where, in 2016, a law was passed to disaggregate or break down Asian American health data. Without a push to make this a federal standard, we won’t have an accurate picture in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s race/ethnicity data, which show few Asian American deaths relative to their proportion of the U.S. population.

Read the full article about Asian health and providing unique healthcare by Lu Dong and Douglas Yeung at RAND Corporation.