News & Updates
“We Don’t Feel ‘Poor’”: How Vibrant Hawaii’s Lived Experience Data Is Shaping Community Understanding and Decisions
Following a deep study of the Hawaii ALICE report, community members across the Big Island were initially struck by what the data showed about Hawaii County: a staggering 61 percent of the county’s households were categorized as struggling to meet basic needs. In some county districts, more than three-fourths of households were labeled as struggling.
Through a series of listening sessions across the island, Vibrant Hawaii’s leadership council met with more than 30 cross-sector leaders and 90 stakeholders, both to share the report’s findings, and to learn about people’s experiences living within ALICE communities. What they heard surprised them. Many community members in attendance expressed that they didn’t, in fact, feel “poor,” despite the ALICE reports findings. In particular, three key conditions countered residents’ perceptions of being poor or struggling…
How Good Data Can Advance Health Equity
Research has consistently found Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (NHPI) are at increased risk of a range of preexisting and underlying health inequities, which in turn places members of these communities at increased risk of infection and severe illness from COVID-19. During the current pandemic, the disproportionality of the disease’s impact distills the health inequities borne by our state’s Pacific Islander community: currently, 30 percent of confirmed COVID-19 cases are among non-Native Hawaiian Pacific Islanders, although they constitute only 4 percent of Hawaii’s population. Recent media coverage suggests, despite recognizing Pacific Islanders’ heightened health risks for the disease, Hawaii state health officials were unprepared to adequately address the needs of this institutionally underserved community during the pandemic.
How can Hawaii better serve the health needs of Pacific Islander communities, particularly as the state wrestles with the impacts of COVID-19? Good data can certainly be part of the solution. What might “good data” mean, in this context?
The Power and Potential of Disaggregated Data
One of the most relevant applications of data disaggregation in Hawaii is regarding race/ethnicity. Asians, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders are at times grouped together under the labels “Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI)” or “Asian and Pacific Islander (API).” These umbrella terms can be useful for analysis—for instance, when survey data doesn’t yield enough subgroup respondents to generate unique analytic categories. However, with the highest percentage of Asians in the country, as well as the largest Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander population in the U.S., Hawaii is better positioned than many states to dig into possible disparities among AAPI subgroups.
Data Equity: What Is It, and Why Does It Matter?
The term “data equity” captures a complex and multi-faceted set of ideas. It refers to the consideration, through an equity lens, of the ways in which data is collected, analyzed, interpreted, and distributed. It underscores marginalized communities’ unequal opportunities to access data and, at times, their harm from data’s misuse. It raises the issue of data sovereignty, and the democratization of data. And data equity pushes us to consider the ways that data can reinforce stereotypes, exacerbate problems like racial bias, or otherwise undermine social justice.