Introduction
For the past nine weeks, I have been interning with the Chronic Diseases Program of the Asian Pacific Islander American Health Forum (APIAHF) under the supervision of Chronic Diseases Program Director, Roxanna Bautista, MPH, CHES and Chronic Diseases Program Coordinator, Mavis Nitta, MPH, CHES. I first learned about APIAHF when I was conducting my senior honors thesis at UC Berkeley on heart disease among Filipinos in the Bay Area. APIAHF was one of the few organizations to make the distinction among the various Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AA & NHPI) subgroups, including Filipinos, and discuss how the uniqueness of these subgroups helps shape their respective health outcomes. Moreover, APIAHF’s holistic approach to health resonated with my own recognition of how environmental factors influence well-being.

My goals for my internship were to: 1) expand my knowledge base on health issues facing AAs & NHPIs and, 2) increase my understanding of the intricacies of addressing AA & NHPI health concerns as a healthcare professional.

Fact Sheets
I spent the majority of my internship updating separate fact sheets on cardiovascular disease, cancer, obesity, and maternal and child health. I found both the process of creating them as well as the actual content to be informative. As noted earlier, APIAHF was one of the few organizations I found during my senior honors thesis research that provided disaggregated health data on AAs & NHPIs. Unfortunately, two years after completing my thesis project, I found this to still be the case. AAs & NHPIs continued to be misclassified as a homogeneous population, and in some cases, as “Other,” even by the leading voices in healthcare and health policy. As a result, the health disparities that particular AA & NHPI communities face, such as the disproportionate rates of breast cancer among Filipino women, are overlooked by more positive outcomes in other AA & NHPI subpopulations. Moreover, I noted the Catch-22 in AA & NHPI health research: there is a lack of statistically significant data on AA & NHPI health; however, without this information, researchers have great difficulty in being awarded grants to conduct further health research on AA & NHPI communities. Most of the “current” data I found was either from the 1990s, or did not include large enough sample groups to be defined as statistically significant.

In terms of content, I found that a lot of the information I came across resonated with my previous findings, specifically the effects of acculturation and cultural and linguistic barriers on shaping health outcomes. Moreover, I found that a lot of the health issues facing underserved AA & NHPI groups in the U.S. were concerns that these communities were already struggling with in their respective home countries. For many AA & NHPI subgroups, lack of resources serves as a barrier to accessing quality healthcare and to adopting a healthy lifestyle vis-à-vis dietary practices. In addition, there continues to be a lack of culturally and linguistically competent healthcare professionals who can adequately address the unique health issues facing AAs & NHPIs.

Cancer Survivorship Conference
My involvement and lessons learned in preparing for and attending the Cancer Survivorship Conference epitomizes my overall internship experience. On the logistical level, I assisted Mavis in completing spreadsheets for our participants’ travel and lodging information. After the conference, I summarized participants’ evaluations of the different breakout sessions. As much as I found this work to be tedious and not necessarily directly related to the goals I laid out for my internship, I recognize the need for humility in this profession. If my supervisors with advanced degrees are preparing name tags, then surely I, who still is in the process of applying to professional school, can willingly do the same.

During the conference, I had the opportunity to interact with and learn from other participants, including cancer survivors, caregivers, and healthcare professionals. I was also impressed with the number of other APIAHF staff whose presence was a significant indicator of the cohesiveness of this organization. While those of us in attendance shared our frustrations over the lack of resources to adequately address the health needs of our respective communities, we also shared a sense of resilience, hope, and celebration of life. There was a common thread of identifying ourselves as part of underserved populations. However, rather than emphasizing on our challenges, I acknowledge how we have, in our own ways, looked at our community’s assets and focused on what can be done to improve our respective health outcomes. Nevertheless, the future does not necessarily come at the expense of the present; we continue to take the time to laugh with and to give thanks for each other.