The Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum (APIAHF) released its 2021 Report on Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Networks for Community Health in the Age of COVID-19: Results of a National Survey of Community-Based Organizations. The report focused on our community-based partners (CBOs), who are fighting on the frontlines of COVID-19 as essential leaders and workers. The report specifically outlines the key priority and advocacy needs for CBOs to support our Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (AA NH/PI) communities.
Key points of the report:
- AA NH/PI communities are large and growing rapidly. AAs are the fastest growing racial or ethnic group in the country.
- Funders, elected officials, and federal and state agencies need to have a better understanding of the community partner organizations that they depend on for health and related services in order to fight COVID and build health equity more broadly.
- Survey of 80 orgs serving people in all states and territories.
- Organizations are operating many programs targeting COVID-19, other deep-rooted health challenges, and social determinants of health without dedicated funding. This underlines how important this work is, and the fact that this importance of this work is not sufficiently recognized by those who make funding decisions.
- In general, the COVID-19-related needs that partner organizations expressed in 2020 were not very well served as of the summer of 2021. In particular: in 2020, 73% were in need of funding to make up for lost revenues; but in 2021, only 39% noted they had received it.