EthnicMajority

(Los Angeles Times) Increased immigration from South Asia helped fuel the rapid growth in the number of Asian Americans over the last decade as well as an influx of Asians to states such as Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia, according to an analysis of U.S. Census data released Wednesday.

Growing numbers of Indians, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis and other South Asians highlight the increasing diversity of Asian Americans in the U.S. and the need for policymakers to understand that diversity, according to “A Community of Contrasts,” published by the Asian American Center for Advancing Justice.

Looking at Asian Americans as a single group masks the distinct social and economic needs of the various ethnicities involved, said Dan Ichinose, director of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center’s Demographic Research Project. For example, while 23% of Pakistani and Bangladeshi Americans lack health insurance, only 8% of Japanese Americans do.

And while 26% of Hmong Americans and 20% of Bangladeshi Americans live below the poverty line, only 6% of Filipinos and 8% of Indians do.

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(Medpage Today) More research is needed on cardiovascular disease in Asian Americans, a science advisory from the American Heart Association stated.

Although limited evidence has found variability in cardiovascular risk among Asian subgroups, most studies lump Asian Americans — the fastest growing racial-ethnic group in the country — into a single cohort, according to the advisory, which was published online in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

“We’ve done an excellent job in researching disparities in other minority groups, but great gaps remain in our knowledge about Asian Americans,” Latha Palaniappan, MD, chair of the AHA’s scientific advisory on cardiovascular disease in Asian Americans, said in a statement.

“We are making a call to action for national funding organizations that the study of Asian Americans should be a priority,” added Palaniappan, who is an investigator at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation Research Institute in California.

Several major federal surveys have only recently begun dividing Asian Americans into subgroups, including the six largest — Asian Indian (or South Asian), Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese.

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