Celebrating Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month: Improving the Health of Silicon Valley’s Diverse Community
When Asian Americans for Community Involvement (AACI) was founded nearly 50 years ago, Silicon Valley was a very different place in terms of diversity.
Back then, the County’s population was 3-4% Asian American; today it’s close to 40%.
Chinese Americans were among the first, and are still the largest Asian immigrant community in the country and in the Bay Area. In our County, they are joined by six other subgroups — Vietnamese, Filipino, and South Asian, Japanese, Korean, and Pacific Islanders — in making up 95% percent of our Asian and Pacific Islander (API) population. Our API population is the?County's largest demographic group — approximately 40% of the County’s population.
Clearly, we enjoy a very different dynamic here than the rest of the country, where an estimated 5-7% of the population is API. Diversity is one of our strengths. That said, it also creates a unique set of challenges in terms of how best to serve and include distinct communities.
Back in 1973, AACI’s 12 founders saw the power of coming together as a collective — then in support of Southeast Asian refugees — and pioneering Asian American activism in the County.
Over the decades AACI grew to provide services to all Asian subgroups as well as to underserved non-Asian groups, with a particular focus on physical and mental health.
As Chair of our County’s Health and Hospital Committee, I well know one of the hard lessons of the pandemic: the importance of connecting vulnerable folks in our community with essential healthcare services in a way that works for them. Another key lesson is prevention — making sure people don’t get sick in the first place.
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In 2016, I pushed for the County’s first comprehensive health study of our API communities. The resulting 2017 API Health Assessment disaggregated individual ethnic groups, revealing?widespread disparities in access to care, as well as differing health risks and outcomes, including, in just two of many examples:
As a result, with AACI as our lead partner, our County embarked on the API Community Health Worker Program to pilot ethnically, culturally, and linguistically specific strategies to improve health outcomes for a diverse community.
In the program's inaugural year, 2021-2022, AACI launched services to the Filipino, South Asian, and Vietnamese communities, with 13 community health workers (CHWs) trained to deliver culturally tailored education around a variety of health-related topics, including COVID-19, domestic violence prevention, mental health, chronic disease prevention, food security, and healthy aging. CHWs are also trained to provide service navigation, referrals, health screenings, and basic motivational counseling.?
Additional County support will now allow AACI to complete core CHW training and service expansion across all seven local API groups this year, as well as develop a more comprehensive data collection framework to track and evaluate long-term program outcomes, and increase technical assistance to small API-serving partner agencies.
The API Community Health Worker program has already made significant strides improving health outcomes. Ultimately, it's about ensuring that this effort offers long-term health solutions and is built to last. Partners like AACI make that possible.
Earlier this month, I was honored to be part of an API Heritage Month event honoring AACI’s founders. As we approach AACI’s 50th?anniversary in November, it’s a wonderful time to recognize and celebrate the impact that AACI has had on the health and wellbeing of individuals, families, and communities,?helping make our County a healthier place to live, work, and play. Thank you AACI, for your dedication and fruitful partnership.