CDC: Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Health Report

CDC website photo.

Results from the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) National Health Interview Survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Statistics have been published in a recent report.

The report uses data from the survey, in combination with 2014 data from the annual National Health Interview Survey to highlight differences in the prevalence of selected health conditions between the NHPI population and the Asian population with whom they have historically been combined.

In 2014, NHPI adults reported a consistent pattern of poorer health compared with single-race Asian adults for all 10 measures in this report.

NHPI adults were also more likely than all U.S. adults to be in fair or poor health, to have diabetes, and to have ever had asthma, but they were less likely to have cancer.

NHPI adults did not differ significantly from all U.S. adults in their likelihood of having each of the three pain-related conditions analyzed (lower back pain, arthritis and migraines), serious psychological
distress and coronary heart disease.

About the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander National Health Interview Survey

Although the Asian or Pacific Islander (NHPI) federal race category was split into two in 1997, few reliable health statistics are available for the NHPI population.

In 2014, the National Center for Health Statistics fielded a first-of-its-kind federal survey focused exclusively on NHPI population health.

Historically, few reliable health statistics have been available for the NHPI population because they constitute only about .4% of the total U.S. population. Thus, this type of analysis has generally not been possible, either because NHPI and Asian data were aggregated to produce Asian or Pacific Islander statistics, or relatedly, because survey sample sizes for NHPI were too small to calculate reliable estimates. Using the relatively large NHPI sample from the 2014 NHPI NHIS, it is possible to calculate reliable NHPI estimates with smaller variance and thereby discern differences between the NHPI population and other racial groups. These results highlight some of the important differences between the NHPI and Asian populations that are obscured when the two groups are combined.