Disparities in substance abuse treatment utilization across Asians and Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders

Background: Research shows that Asian Americans have lower rates of substance abuse treatment utilization than Caucasians. However, investigators have recently begun to separate Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders (NH/PI) from Asian Americans. Thus, it remains unclear whether disparities in treatment utilization differ across NH/PIs and Asian Americans. Objective: This study examined disparities in substance abuse treatment utilization across NH/PIs and Asian Americans. Method: Data was utilized from the 2001-2002 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC), a large, nationally representative survey (N = 43,093). A chi-square analysis examined whether disparities in utilization differed between these two groups. Results: We found that NH/PIs who thought they should seek treatment for their drinking were statistically and significantly less likely than Asians to do so. We found no statistically significant differences for drug use. Discussion: Results suggest the possibility that alcohol use has become increasingly embedded and normalized in NH/PI culture as opposed to Asian American culture while drug use has not. Thus, alcohol's normalization may result in NH/PIs more frequently failing to seek needed alcohol treatment. This indicates that public health policy should consider alcohol and drug use separately when designing and implementing culturally-specific preventions and interventions. For example, public funding efforts might specifically seek to decrease alcohol normalization among NH/PIs through community awareness campaigns, while they increase the availability of treatment opportunities. In sum, results highlight the need to increasingly consider cross-cultural variation in research while simultaneously developing culturally sensitive prevention and intervention programs.