Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) are the fastest growing and most diverse of this country's racial and ethnic minorities but are still often viewed inaccurately as a homogenous 'model minority' with few health or social issues. According to the Department of Health and Human Services APPI Working Group, adequate data or health status are not available and no data system has been developed to monitor systematically the health status of AAPIs The Hawaii Minority Research Infrastructure Research Program is designed to build research infrastructure to measure and evaluate racial health disparities for AAPIs and provide developing researchers with the mentorship and training necessary to become independent investigators.
The specific aims are to: 1. Develop research infrastructure, including technical support, essential to increase and improve collection, analyses, and dissemination of data about AAPI populations and subpopulations. 2. Facilitate collaboration between institutions to support the conduct of health services research in Hawaii and to accelerate the translation of research into practice. 3. Establish an interactive mentoring group, consisting of nationally recognized advisors, to assist in the implementation and evaluation of hypothesis-driven research projects. 4. Implement investigator-initiated, hypothesis-driven projects on the quality of care for patients with cancer and psychiatric disorders and compliance with anti-hypertensive medications. To meet these aims, personnel (including a biostatistician and program manager) will be recruited and trained; a collaborative relationship, including in-kind support and access to data and other resources, between the University of Hawaii and Hawaii's largest medical insurer and hospital will be established in support of this infrastructure developed to support the three projects in this proposal can be used to determine if health disparities exist among AAPIs for a broad range of disease states and to facilitate collaborations with other minority institutions to address universal issues affecting racial/ethnic health disparities.
