Study: Young Hawaiians, Pacific Islanders Face Nation’s Highest Cancer Death Rate
Tackling the racial gap in cancer deaths requires more specialized data.
The death rate from cancer in the United States is highest among young Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders compared to any other race group, according to by the National Cancer Institute.
Racial disparities among Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders have been noted in local cancer research, leading academics to ask for funding to analyze the cancer divide ingrained in race and ethnicity in a bill killed by lawmakers this session.聽
But the study published last month marks the first time that Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders between the ages of 20 and 49 have been pinpointed at the national level as being most likely to die of any kind of cancer when compared to American Indians and Alaska Natives, Asians, Blacks, Latinos or whites of the same age.
The study, which examined cancer death data between 2018 and 2020, could help drive funding toward more ethnically diverse cancer research, according to Director Naoto Ueno.
Brenda Hernandez, a UH Cancer Center researcher, said she鈥檚 not surprised by the NCI study findings, which she said highlight the importance of disaggregating Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander cancer data.
Until recently, race reporting at the federal level has lumped Americans of Asian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander ancestry in a single category. In 1997, the 鈥淎sian/Pacific Islander鈥 category was split into 鈥淎sian鈥 and 鈥淣ative Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander.鈥 But it wasn’t until 2018 that individual states caught up to reflect the new racial breakdown on death certificates.
鈥淲e鈥檝e never lumped those groups together at the Cancer Center because ethnicity really reflects culture, environment and to some extent genetics,鈥 Hernandez said. 鈥淏ut it鈥檚 been more challenging to do that from a national perspective. It鈥檚 not because there鈥檚 not a sensitivity for doing so or there鈥檚 not an understanding of the need to do so, but it鈥檚 more of a statistical issue of being able to compare incidence rates in a very small population.鈥
Locally, the , the UH Cancer Center and the Hawaii Tumor Registry charged with cancer surveillance in the islands have long recorded Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander data separately from Asian populations.
The UH Cancer Center and its typically break down Asian data into specific categories for Japanese, Filipino, Chinese and other Asian people. Local researchers are still not able to collect and report cancer data for smaller groups, such as Samoans or Micronesians, however.
Last year data from the Hawaii Tumor Registry revealed that Native Hawaiian women in the islands have higher death rates from breast and lung cancers than women of Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, other Asian and white races.
In January, President Joe Biden鈥檚 administration committed to improving equity for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders nationally. The new strategy goes beyond health disparities, targeting improvements in data collection, anti-discrimination efforts and language access.
As part of this initiative, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently began on Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders. The data has so far revealed that the community experienced unemployment at more than double the national unemployment rate in November 2020, several months into pandemic economic shutdowns.
