NAWHO Blog

Profiles on Asian Community Health: Korean Community Services of Metropolitan New York

Asian Pacific Islanders are by percentage the fastest growing group in New York City, doubling every decade since 1970, and making up nearly 12% of the population. New York City has the largest Asian Pacific American populaton of any U.S. city.  In fact, there are more Asian Pacific Americans in New York City than there are residents in San Francisco.  Of the one million Asian Pacific Americans in New York City:

 

1 out 3 Asian Pacific Americans are linguistically isolated, meaning that no one over the age of 14 in a household speaks English well.

1 out of 4 Asian Pacific Americans lives in poverty. 

1 out of 5 Asian Pacific Americans does not have health insurance.

Our Stories, Our Health: An Innovative Media Health Initiative for Southeast Asian Elders

By Ethan Nguyen, University of Pennsylvania Asian Health Initiatives

 

Elderly Southeast Asian Americans face tremendous barriers in accessing quality health care. These challenges to quality care are numerous, including limited-English-proficient status, inability to navigate the health care system, and poor health literacy.

Here in Philadelphia, Our Stories, Our Health is a collaborative media health initiative aiming to engage immigrant Laotian and Vietnamese seniors in the process of identifying and describing health needs through personal storytelling, video production, and discussion about health in the Southeast Asian community. A Southeast Asian Elders Council selected the topics of focus, which will be high blood pressure and doctor-patient communication. Through digital videos to be produced by elders trained under this project, Laotian and Vietnamese immigrants will their stories about personal experiences dealing with health. These videos will be incorporated into community workshops intended to encourage discussion on health disparities and communication barriers faced by immigrants.