AAPI Nexus: Policy, Practice and Community

Since 1982, Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics, Inc. (LEAP) has been intent on “growing leaders” within Asian Pacific American (APA) communities across the country. LEAP’s founders had a simple yet powerful idea: In order for APA communities to realize their full potential and to foster robust participation in the larger democratic process, those communities must develop leaders in all sectors who can advocate and speak on their behalf. A national, nonprofit organization, LEAP achieves its mission by: Developing people, because leaders are made, not born; Informing society, because leaders know the issues; and Empowering communities, because leaders are grounded in strong, vibrant communities.

This article calls attention to the lack of workforce diversity in promoting Asian Pacific Americans to the highest career levels in the federal government. It describes the historic difficulties in realizing significant numbers of APAs in the senior ranks of almost all government agencies. Two major reports from the General Accounting Office (GAO) corroborate this view and depict the pessimistic prospects for any significant improvement in the immediate future. It is urged that there be prompt implementation of the recommendations from the GAO, that specific agency plans and actions be established and monitored, that Congress continue to exercise close oversight regarding federal workforce diversity, and that Office of Personnel Management (OPM) collect and disseminate timely, accurate workforce demographics so that all agencies can be held accountable to the American public.

We use nationally representative data and carefully specified statistical models to investigate the glass-ceiling hypothesis according to which Asian Americans are less likely to be managers in administrative hierarchies. We focus our analysis on native-born Asian Americans who have not received much attention in previous research. The results indicate that native-born Asian American men are at least as likely as white men to be employed as managers in the government sector even after adjusting for education and other demographic characteristics. For both men and women, there is only limited evidence that native-born Asian Americans are significantly less likely than whites to be employed as managers in the non-self-employed private sector. Although a few notable differences by specific Asian ethnicity are discussed, we interpret our findings as indicating that, at least among the native-born Asian Americans, the glass-ceiling may not be so widely pervasive at the occupational level. Future research should investigate the glass-ceiling hypothesis using data that focus more specifically on the higher levels of managerial hierarchies.

Despite scientific advances that documents race and ethnicity as critical factors associated with inequities in health and health care quality, the general political climate has the potential to undermine efforts to improve the quality of life for people in diverse communities. We call for more creative research programs on health issues in Asian American communities to move beyond prevalence and risk factors toward investigating the mechanisms and processes that produce illness and lead to poor quality of health. We emphasize a compelling need to revisit traditional and accepted findings to determine their appropriateness for Asian American communities. We also suggested that as we establish the mechanisms that link social factors and health, we must also place them within the appropriate historical and cultural contexts that are essential for the health of people in their communities.

The lack of health data on Asian ethnic subgroups has been noted as the major setback in dispelling the myth of the model minority. Population-representative samples of this relatively low-frequency racial group still fail to yield sufficient sample size to provide disaggregated information on Asian ethnic groups. As such, health information for Asian American subgroups is often acquired from surname list-assisted sampling methods, which may be fraught with biases toward particular groups not representative of the overall population. As one of the first major surveys to use both RDD and surname list-assisted sampling methods to sample Asian subgroups, the 2001 California Health Interview Survey provides the unique opportunity to determine whether significant differences exist between the RDD sample and the list-assisted sample for South Asians, Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese. For each Asian ethnic group, we performed chi-squared tests to compare the list and RDD sample proportions for several demographic health access and health status measures. We found that demographic differences in lists versus probability samples are most pronounced among South Asians and Vietnamese and to a lesser extent among Japanese, but it is less of an issue among Koreans. In addition, we found that the list and RDD samples did not deviate significantly from each other in most of the health status and health access measures. Particularly for South Asians, Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese, we conclude that surname lists approximated population-based estimates of their health status and health access and surname list sampling should continue to be considered as an alternative strategy when cost constraints prohibit investment in probability-based oversamples.

Illinois is home to the sixth largest Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) population nationwide. AAPIs suffer higher incidence, morbidity, and mortality rates from certain cancers, infectious, and chronic diseases. Despite the exponential growth of the AAPI population, few state-level data sources exist that provide detailed and accurate information regarding AAPI health disparities and needs. Efforts to improve health care for this population will require improved data collection and funding for research on AAPI ethnic groups.