Cancer Research Center for Health Equity, Cedars-Sinai Cancer, West Hollywood, CA, United States.
Department of Health, Society, and Behavior, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, United States.
Front Public Health. 2022 Aug 25;10:958530. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.958530. eCollection 2022.
Filipinx Americans working in healthcare are at risk for COVID-19 death but lack consistent mortality data on healthcare worker deaths. The lack of disaggregated data for Asian subgroups proliferates anti-Asian structural racism as the needs of high-risk groups are systematically undetected to merit a proper public health response. We work around this aggregated data problem by examining how the overrepresentation of Filipinxs in healthcare contributes to COVID-19 mortality among Asian American populations.
To overcome the lack of COVID-19 mortality data among Filipinx American healthcare workers, we merged data from several sources: Kanlungan website (the only known public-facing source of systematically reported mortality data on Filipinx healthcare workers nationally and globally), National Center for Health Statistics, and 2014-2018 American Community Survey. We examined county-level associations using -tests, scatterplots, and linear regression.
A higher percentage of Filipinxs among Asian Americans was correlated with a higher percentage of COVID-19 decedents who are Asian Americans ( = 0.24, = 0.01). The percentage of Filipinx in healthcare remained a strong predictor of COVID-19 deaths among Asian Americans even after adjusting for age, poverty, and population density (coef = 1.0, < 0.001). For every 1% increase in Filipinx among the healthcare workforce, the percentage of Asian American COVID-19 decedents increased by 1%.
Our study shows that the overrepresentation of Filipinxs in healthcare contributes to COVID-19 mortality disparities among Asian Americans. Our findings advocate for systems change by practicing anti-racist data agendas that collect and report on Asian subgroups for effective real-time targeted approaches against health inequities.
在医疗保健领域工作的菲律宾裔美国人面临 COVID-19 死亡的风险，但缺乏医护人员死亡的一致死亡率数据。由于缺乏针对亚裔亚群体的分类数据，反亚裔结构性种族主义泛滥，高风险群体的需求被系统地忽视，无法得到适当的公共卫生应对。我们通过研究菲律宾裔在医疗保健中的过度代表性如何导致亚裔美国人 COVID-19 死亡率升高，来解决这种综合数据问题。
为了克服缺乏菲律宾裔美国医护人员 COVID-19 死亡率数据的问题，我们合并了多个来源的数据：Kanlungan 网站（唯一一个已知的面向公众的、系统报告全国和全球菲律宾裔医护人员死亡率的来源）、国家卫生统计中心和 2014-2018 年美国社区调查。我们使用 -检验、散点图和线性回归分析了县级关联。
亚裔美国人中菲律宾裔的比例与亚裔美国人 COVID-19 死者的比例呈正相关（ = 0.24， = 0.01）。即使在调整年龄、贫困和人口密度后，菲律宾裔在医疗保健中的比例仍然是亚裔美国人 COVID-19 死亡的一个强有力的预测因素（系数 = 1.0， < 0.001）。每增加 1%的菲律宾裔医护人员，亚裔美国人 COVID-19 死者的比例就会增加 1%。
我们的研究表明，菲律宾裔在医疗保健中的过度代表性导致了亚裔美国人 COVID-19 死亡率的差异。我们的研究结果倡导通过实施反种族主义的数据议程来进行系统变革，收集和报告亚裔亚群体的数据，以便针对健康不平等问题采取有效的实时针对性方法。
