Higher death rate among Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders

Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders living in King County are poorer and have higher rates of smoking, obesity and death than do other residents of the area, according to a report by Public Health – Seattle & King County.

The new report found that, compared to other King County residents, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander adults were one-and-a-half times more likely to be smokers twice as likely to be obese.

Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander children were twice as likely to live below the poverty lines and infants were more likely to have received late or no prenatal care, be born to teen mothers, and to be delivered prematurely.

The percentage of adults who reported that they had fair or poor health was about the same as the King County average, but, overall, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islanders had death rates higher than other King County residents.

The health problems of this population were obscured in earlier studies because Pacific Islanders were grouped together with Asians, a group that has better than average health statistics. New federal guidelines on how data on race and ethnicity are collected made the new study possible.

More than 15,000 Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders live in the county. The term Other Pacific Islanders includes: people from Samoa, Fiji, Guam, Tonga, Micronesia, French Polynesia, Palau, the Northern Mariana Islands and the Marshall Islands.

Tags: Asian, Hawaiian, Pacific Islander

Category: Asian Health