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By Arianna Abalos
“You may begin.”
Even before the actual exam or appointment, an anxiety-inducing question for many has presented itself. Everyone, for census data, the SATs, or applications, checked the boxes for racial demographics. In most cases, the boxes are limited to a few racial categories, group some categories and/or don’t offer expansion into ethnicity. This not only creates confusion for the participant, but has potential for inaccuracies and generalizations about health data.
In reporting health statistics, patient questionnaires and data reports need to expand beyond race in the demographics category. Reporting ethnicity in addition to race can help to equitably address a higher prevalence of health conditions within ethnic communities by simply acknowledging they exist.
Race is not specific enough in reporting health data, because some ethnicities have higher risk factors for certain conditions in comparison to their race as a whole. This can be seen in the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Filipino healthcare workers because of the lack of specificity in pandemic mortality and cases, according to a 2021 study.
Filipino American deaths and cases were reported under Asian Americans. Although this is technically correct, Filipino Americans present higher rates of conditions that are risk factors for COVID-19, such as diabetes and hypertension, compared to Asian Americans as a whole. According to the American Diabetes Association, 9.1% of adults diagnosed with diabetes were Asian American. This includes Filipino Americans. In comparison, Filipino Americans by themselves make up 12.2% of Asian American adults with diabetes, making them the Asian American group with the highest rate of the disease. Although there is a difference in the prevalence of diabetes between the two groups, the distinction does not appear to be significant, so there was not a problem to be reported. This meant that there were little to no additional protective measures to protect Filipino American healthcare workers from contracting COVID-19.
The non-holistic reporting of COVID-19 statistics likely led to more Filipino Americans and others contracting and dying from the disease because they were not being helped for a problem that did not appear to exist. Of the 25% of Filipino Americans that comprise the Asian American population in California, they were 29.5% of the Asian American COVID-19 deaths (Escobedo et al., 2022). Still, other states with significant Filipino American populations did not show ethnicity breakdown in the Asian American category for pandemic cases and mortality. Since there was no difference in race versus ethnicity data shown, there was no disparity to be reported or addressed.
This inequity affects all minority groups. Many other ethnicities and minorities have high rates of certain health issues, which may not be the same for their race or community as a whole. Not acknowledging the differences can lead to greater disparities in access to health resources that combat certain diseases they are more susceptible to, in addition to higher case and mortality rates.
To combat this disparity, more funding and resources are necessary to enable more accurate and specific data reporting, so that inequities are known and addressed. Furthermore, underreporting in data needs to be better accounted for, due to some individuals’ uncertainty and ambiguity with their ethnicity and external vulnerabilities. The non-medical factors that influence a certain ethnicity’s susceptibility to a certain condition should be considered. For example, 38% of Filipinos live in a household with at least one other healthcare worker, increasing their risk of transmission and exposure to COVID-19.
For patients who are self-reporting their race and ethnicity data, elaborating on the difference between race and ethnicity and explaining the importance of reporting their data, to address health inequities possibly within their own ethnicity and community, may give them a greater incentive to report their ethnicity.
By specifying race and ethnicity data through the expansion and explanation of boxes to check, health and socioeconomic disparities can be realized and addressed for minority communities.