AAPI Nexus: Policy, Practice and Community

Progress in Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) health data had begun by the 1990s, although the gains have been temporal and localized. This resource paper reviews the Hawai’i Health Interview Survey, the California Health Interview Survey, and the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) with specific data on AAPIs. We then provide an analysis of the NHIS to illustrate its usefulness and limitations in estimating access to health services of three socioeconomically similar AAPI subgroups– Chinese, Filipinos, and Koreans. The results underscore the need to disaggregate AAPI data. In tandem with recent improvements in the NHIS, other states with a large AAPI population should invest in ethnic-specific oversampling and in-language survey efforts similar to what has been done in California.