Health Atlas

Many health surveys include a question asking about race or ethnicity. The collected survey findings, or survey data, may be used to describe or characterize a community or a population. Asian American (AA), Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander (NH/PI) survey data are often presented in aggregate (combined into one category) or are not collected or presented at all. The way in which data is collected and presented frames how resources, services and research are allocated and prioritized for AA and NH/PI communities.

CSAAH’s Health Atlas tool is an innovative resource that presents data from several local and national datasets and helps to visually document health disparities in risk factors, disease prevalence, and key health topics across the geographic spectrum, disaggregated by Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander subgroups. Key findings highlight differences in AA and NH/PI health outcomes and risk factors by geographic location compared to the overall U.S. population, and identify where there are gaps in the data.

The Health Atlas tool was developed in partnership with community and health department leaders across the U.S., including CSAAH’s National Advisory Committee on Research (NAC) and Scientific Committee, and it is an extension of CSAAH’s community-engaged, community-participatory health resources and needs assessment work.

This resource presents areas where AAs and NH/PIs are disproportionately impacted by disease, and demonstrates that they also experience variation in health risk and prevalence when data are disaggregated by subgroups.

For questions, feel free to reach out to Dr. Stella Yi at: Stella.Yi@nyulangone.org.

HOW TO USE THE TOOL

  • On each page, you will see a bar chart presenting prevalence for a specified health issue/concern.
  • Each shaded bar on the chart represents a different dataset. Bars are grouped into aggregated and disaggregated AA and NH/PI subgroups. Aggregated subgroup data appears toward the left part of the page, followed by individual AA or NH/PI subgroups.
  • National prevalence is shown in a contrasting shaded grey wall behind the bars for easy comparison to datasets and subgroups.
  • A box below the chart includes technical notes and a key defining each of the abbreviated datasets on each page. Bolded text summarizes selected key findings and interpretations of the data at the bottom of each page.
  • A detailed explanation of each dataset, AA and NH/PI subgroup definitions, and further technical notes can be found at the end of the PDF resource!