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Online Program

326509
Measuring Racial Discrimination in Hawaii's Chuukese Community: A Systematic Literature Review


Monday, November 2, 2015 : 10:50 a.m. - 11:10 a.m.

Megan Hagiwara, MPH, Department of Public Health, University of Hawaii, Manoa, Honolulu, HI
Tetine Sentell, PhD, Office of Public Health Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI
Kathryn L. Braun, DrPH, Office of Public Health Studies, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI
Audio (mp3) recording Recorded Presentation (mp4)
A growing body of literature supports the theory that racial discrimination leads to negative health outcomes.  Our goal is to apply this theory to better understand the underlying health inequities of Hawaii's Chuukese community.  Despite advances made in racial discrimination research, there is still no gold standard for measuring this construct.  Therefore the goal of this review is to identify scales and/ or items that may be culturally appropriate for the Chuukese community.  Since no study has been published on measuring racial discrimination in Micronesians, we will search for studies measuring racial discrimination in Asian Pacific Islander (API) and indigenous communities, as they may have similar cultural preferences.

Method:  Using a various combinations of search terms we search Pubmed and Academic Search Premier.  To be included, articles had to be in English, published before February 2015, and measure racial discrimination in one of our target racial/ethnic groups.  Each study was evaluated on the specific items they used to measure racial discrimination and their dissemination methods including aspects such as; the use of racialized or neutral wording and the measurement of individual and/or collective experiences with racial discrimination.  We then compare how these studies differed from eight widely used racial discrimination scales.

Results: A total of 30 studies were included in our study.  Studies done with indigenous/ API populations were more likely to include measurements regarding collective experiences with racial discrimination as well as specific examples of unfair treatment that were unique to their racial/ethnic group.

Conclusion: Using this information we drafted a culturally appropriate racial discrimination measurement tool for Hawaii's Chuukese population.  Other practitioners working with similar populations may find this work valuable.  The next step is to collect input from community members and use cognitive interviewing to test our instrument.

Learning Areas:

Other professions or practice related to public health
Provision of health care to the public
Public health or related research
Social and behavioral sciences

Learning Objectives:
Compare racial discrimination tools used in the peer reviewed literature. Evaluate aspects of measurement tools that would be most culturally appropriate for the Chuukese community. Formulate a measurement tool to assess racial discrimination in Hawaii's Chuukese community to better understand root causes of health inequities.

Keyword(s): Asian and Pacific Islanders, Human Rights

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have worked with the Micronesian community for 5 years through a community health center as the Tobacco Programs Coordinator. Together we created culturally appropriate programming and health materials regarding tobacco and betel nut cessation. Although proud of the work we accomplished I felt I was treating tobacco as the problem rather than the result of a larger problem. So in 2012 I went back to school to study racial discrimination in Hawaii's Micronesian population.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

Back to: 3133.0: South Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander American Health Issues