#StopAsianHate: Kaiser Permanente gives $5.4 million to fight back anti-Asian hate & violence

Kaiser Permanente, the nation’s largest nonprofit health care organization, has committed $5.4 million to combat the surge in violence against people of Asian descent and to support the rights, health, and wellness of the Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities. 

Racial prejudice toward these groups predates the COVID-19 pandemic but has recently increased as pejorative connections between COVID-19 and people of Asian heritage have fueled xenophobic, anti-Asian sentiment and hate crimes.

Kaiser Permanente’s financial commitment is intended to help prevent further racist acts, provide interventions when they occur, and promote healing in communities that have been discriminated against. Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders represent 34% of Kaiser Permanente employees, and 23% of its 12.4-million-person membership.

“Kaiser Permanente recognizes the pain that many of our employees, members, and communities are experiencing due to the unacceptable increase in assaults, harassment, and hate crimes directed at people of Asian descent — including the tragic March 16 attacks in Atlanta,” said Greg A. Adams, Kaiser Permanente chair and chief executive officer. 

“As a health care organization, we understand that it is fundamentally impossible to achieve emotional or physical well-being when subjected to violence, racism, and other forms of discrimination, and so stand firmly against all forms of social injustice.”

The grant recipients include two organizations that advocate nationally for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities: Asian Americans Advancing Justice — AAJC and Stop AAPI Hate. 

According to Stop AAPI Hate, the group received reports of 3,292 incidents in 2020 involving verbal harassment, avoidance/shunning, physical assault, vandalism, and other forms of discrimination. Nearly 45% of those incidents took place in California.

Asian Americans Advancing Justice — AAJC, a national nonprofit in Washington, D.C., that advocates for the civil and human rights of Asian Americans and underserved allied communities, will assist in redistributing grant funds to community-based organizations where Kaiser Permanente operates and will work with four other independent organizations in the Advancing Justice affiliation. 

“Advancing Justice — AAJC is honored to be in partnership with Kaiser Permanente,” said John C. Yang, president and executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice — AAJC. “Too often Asian American communities are overlooked because of the harmful ‘model minority’ myth or targeted because of the perpetual foreigner stereotypes that exist. This significant funding provides a robust opportunity to address anti-Asian hate through collaboration between local community organizations and a national response.”

Grant funding will be used to:

• Advance the civil and human rights of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders through education, advocacy, and community building
• Address misinformation and xenophobia, and increase reporting of hate targeting the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities
• Strengthen infrastructure within regional community-based organizations for preventing racist attacks, intervening when they occur, and promoting healing

These grants, approved by its board on March 10, are part of Kaiser Permanente’s broad, established commitment to improve health equity and address racism in the communities it serves. Partnering with organizations that have a trusted presence within communities is a long-standing priority for the organization. 

Editorial Comment from Views From the Edge: Kudos to Kaiser, but so much more can be done by corporations and foundations to recognize the existence of AAPI communities and to address their needs. We're not anybody's "model minority."

Filipinos, Native Hawaiians have more health risk factors than other AAPI groups

Kaiser findings suggest value in identifying AAPI patients’ 

ethnic backgrounds in medical records

By Jan Greene
Kaiser Permanente

Asian Americans from different parts of Asia have very different cardiovascular risk factors and chronic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease, research from the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research suggests.

The study released Sunday (Nov. 24) found that overall, Filipinos and Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders had significantly more risk factors and chronic disease prevalence than other Asian American ethnic groups. Prevalence among Filipinos and Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders was similar to that for blacks and Latinos, two groups that have been the focus of health disparities research.

“Based on a relatively small body of previous research, we suspected that we would see differences,“ said lead author Nancy Gordon, ScD, a research scientist with the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research. “But we didn’t expect them to be so large. For instance, Filipino Americans in the study were twice as likely to have diabetes than those of Chinese ethnicity.”

The study, published in BMC Public Health November 25, used electronic health record (EHR) data for 1.4 million adults aged 45 to 84 who were Kaiser Permanente Northern California members during 2016. The researchers identified 274,910 Asian Americans using race and ethnicity information from the EHR and patient surveys.

They assigned the patients to Asian subgroups, including Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Southeast Asian and South Asian. They also studied Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, who are grouped together separately in epidemiological research.

The study examined prevalence of smoking, obesity (using both standard and Asian-specific classifications), and diagnoses of diabetes, hypertension, and coronary artery disease.

Other findings of the research included:

• Diabetes prevalence ranged from a low of 15.6% for Chinese to 31.9% for Filipinos and 34.5% for Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.

• Obesity using standard BMI measurement ranged from 7.6% among Koreans and Southeast Asians to 43.6% among Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, 20.8% among Filipinos, 20% among South Asians, and 19.7% among Japanese.

• Using a separate BMI threshold recommended for Asians, obesity prevalence ranged from 19% among Southeast Asians, Koreans, and Chinese to 36% to 40% among Japanese, South Asians, and Filipinos; it was 60% among Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders. Prevalence was higher among men than women in most subgroups, except South Asian and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders

• Smoking rates were 3% for South Asians, 4.8% for Chinese, 7.3% for Southeast Asian and Filipino, 7.7% for Korean, and 10.4% for Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders.

The research team didn’t attempt to explain the reasons for the differences. The authors plan to further study issues such as the role of obesity in varying diabetes prevalence and how social determinants of health and psychosocial risk factors relate to differences in chronic illness prevalence among Asian ethnicities.

The information could identify patients who are more likely to have cardiovascular risks and chronic conditions, allowing physicians to carry out earlier screening and more frequent monitoring, said coauthor Joan Lo, MD, a research scientist with the Division of Research. 

“This could become even more important as physicians increasingly see patients by video or phone visits that don’t involve collection of vital signs that can track small changes in health status,” she said.

The findings could also be of interest to health researchers and population health managers, Gordon said. Having more granular Asian ethnicity data in the EHR would allow health systems to track quality metrics specific to Asian ethnic groups.

Asian ethnicity information could also help organizations enhance delivery of equitable and culturally competent care by offering ethnicity-tailored dietary assessments and patient education resources, Gordon said. They could also use it to build a workforce whose ethnic diversity mirrors the patient population, she added.

The study was funded by the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Community Benefit Program.