COVID-19 exposes how Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders face stark health care disparities

We see the headlines regularly: COVID-19 has revealed long-standing systemic social and health inequities facing members of racial and ethnic minority groups. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that Black people and Latinos are almost  three times as likely to become infected and up to twice as likely to die from COVID-19 when compared with whites.But what about other minority groups, such as the Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, who even amid calls for more equitable attention and treatment often get overlooked? The needs of the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander populations have historically been unmet because data is not collected and published in ways that target these specific groups.Ninez Ponce, director of the  UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and a professor of health policy and management at the Fielding School of Public Health, and a team of scholars from across the United States are working to address the issue. Ponce and Karla Thomas, who graduated from UCLA in 2019 and is currently a graduate student at USC, spoke to us about the need to collect more data on Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders and the upcoming launch of the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander COVID-19 Data Policy Lab at the UCLA CHPR. The center will be hosting a  webinar to introduce the lab and share data about the pandemic’s impact on Aug. 27.How is COVID-19 affecting Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders and why did you decide to focus on this p...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news