Kaiser Permanente research presented at American Heart Association Epidemiology and Prevention meeting highlights need to study Asian subgroups
Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and other Pacific Islander (AANHPI) populations experience differences in their risk of — and their specific risk factors for — developing cardiovascular disease, a Kaiser Permanente study found. The research is being presented at the American Heart Association’s Epidemiology and Prevention | Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health Scientific Sessions in New Orleans.
“Historically, Asian American, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander populations have frequently been grouped together as a single, homogenous racial and ethnic group in clinical and epidemiologic research, which masks important variations in both risk factor prevalence and disease burden,” said lead author Rishi V. Parikh, MPH, a senior research analyst at the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research. “Despite being the fastest growing population in the U.S., existing studies about Asian subgroups remain limited by inadequate sample size and exclusion of some major disaggregated subgroups, as well as a lack of long-term follow up.”
The PANACHE (Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian and Asian American Cardiovascular Health Epidemiology) study analyzed the health records of about 700,000 adults enrolled in Kaiser Permanente Northern California and Kaiser Permanente Hawaii from 2012 through 2022. Participants in the study included adults who self-identified as Chinese, Filipino, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, other Southeast Asian (including Thai, Laotian, Cambodian, Hmong, Burmese, Indonesian, Malaysian, or Singaporean) or South Asian (including Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi, Nepali, or Bhutanese).
The findings included:
- High blood pressure prevalence ranged from 12% in Chinese adults to 30% in Filipino adults.
- High cholesterol prevalence ranged from 20% in Chinese adults to 33% in Filipino adults.
- Obesity ranged from 11% in Vietnamese adults to 41% in Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander adults.
- Type 2 diabetes prevalence ranged from 5% in Chinese adults to 14% in Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander adults.
Additional information is available from the American Heart Association.
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