No Equity without Data Equity: Data Reporting Gaps for Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders as Structural Racism

Brittany N. Morey is an assistant professor with the Department of Health, Society, and Behavior at the University of California, Irvine. She also is a faculty affiliate with the NHPI Data Policy Lab at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. Her research focuses on how structural inequity shapes racial and ethnic health inequities, the overall goal of which is to understand how society creates health inequities along the lines of race/ethnicity, nativity, and immigration status to inform better policies and programs that address and undo these patterns.

brittany.morey@uci.edu

Richard Calvin Chang is the data analytics director and a cofounding member of the NHPI Data Policy Lab at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. His work focuses on raising awareness of COVID-19's disproportionate impact on NHPIs and ensuring the community is accurately represented with policy makers and stakeholders. He previously worked as an attorney and policy director for NHPI nonprofits and served as president of the Pacific Islander Health Partnership. He is a coauthor of the first demographic profile of NHPIs and “Policy Platform Blueprint for Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in the United States.”

Karla Blessing Thomas is the policy director and a cofounding member of the NHPI Data Policy Lab at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. She is a community activist passionate about advancing health equity for Pacific Islanders, and she currently leads community-based COVID-19 response efforts in California's Inland Empire.

‘Alisi Tulua is the project director of the NHPI Data Policy Lab at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. She brings her 15-plus years of nonprofit experience serving NHPI communities to her current role, which focuses on building data capacity for promoting health equity for NHPIs.

Corina Penaia is the community engagement and research director and a cofounding member of the NHPI Data Policy Lab at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. She works closely with policy makers and community stakeholders to address prevalent health issues that impact Pacific Islander and Asian families. Her experience includes implementing public health programs in underserved communities, where she has developed a passion for and extensive expertise in producing culturally relevant and sensitive programming centered on food insecurity, chronic diseases, and related policy and advocacy as well as implementing nutrition education and obesity prevention programs.

Vananh D. Tran is a third-year medical student at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and is part of the Program in Medical Education—Leadership and Advocacy (PRIME-LA). Her academic interests lie in the intersection of medicine, inequity, policy, and health.

Nicholas Pierson is a former high school teacher and a current data scientist with the NHPI Data Policy Lab at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

John C. Greer is a data scientist with the NHPI Data Policy Lab at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. His work focuses on building data systems that highlight the impact of COVID-19 on NHPIs.

Malani Bydalek is a graduate of UC Irvine whose primary interests lie in environmental justice and conservation.

Ninez Ponce is professor with the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and a director at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. She leads the California Health Interview Survey, the nation's largest state health survey that is recognized as a national model for race/ethnicity data collection. She has served on committees for the National Center for Health Statistics and the National Academy of Medicine, where her expertise has focused on the measurement and use of race/ethnicity to monitor health equity. In 2019 she received AcademyHealth's HSR Impact Award for her contributions to population health measurement to inform public policies.