Cancer disproportionately impacts the AAPI community. Lawmakers must take notice and act

As Washington reaches vaccination thresholds that allow the return of some normalcy in our daily lives, the impacts of COVID-19 will remain with our community for years to come. More than a year of isolation and delayed checkups will have an impact on every aspect of our health – from mental to physical.

This is especially true for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, who are disproportionately impacted by higher rates of cancer diagnosis and mortality. As partners in providing front-line services to address unmet needs in the community, we know that meeting the healthcare needs of vulnerable patients will require greater collaboration between lawmakers, clinicians and community members moving forward.

Cancer has been the leading cause of death for Asian Americans in the US since 2000, outpacing heart disease, stroke and many other chronic illnesses – an anomaly when compared to mortality trends in other demographic segments of the country. Further, the five-year cancer-specific survival rate for AAPI men is persistently lower than in white communities. Creating a future with more equitable healthcare outcomes for all Washingtonians means better understanding factors – both upstream and downstream – that contribute to these disparities in the first place.

Addressing health disparities at a meaningful scale requires marshaling the resources of the federal government to create change that will persist between generations. While President Obama signed an executive order in 2009 directing the government to identify and address challenges unique to the AAPI community, cancer screening rates for Asian Americans still lag significantly behind other communities, even when accounting for differences such as income and educational attainment.

As a group, Asian Americans are not a monolith, and further understanding how best to improve healthcare outcomes for the community first requires disaggregating data between different sub-groups to understand the diverse spectrum of needs across distinct people with varying lived experiences, challenges and cultural dispositions. The Biden Administration called out the importance of a more granular understanding of needs across disparate demographics via executive order earlier this year, and the establishment of the Equitable Data Working Group is a step in the right direction, but it must be backed by additional policy action in Congress to transmute deeper understanding of diverse communities into an enduring policy response.

Indicators of community well-being in Washington state are still primarily bound to that community’s zip code. Similarly, the trajectory of an individual’s healthcare journey remains intricately linked to the neighborhood they are born into. This is especially true for patients managing complex illnesses such as cancer. Access to regular screening resources varies widely between communities, as does the availability of more specialized diagnostics and treatment options.

Widening the top of the cancer screening funnel to be more accessible regardless of local clinical infrastructure would benefit a broad swath of the country that still lacks capacity to close the gap in cancer mortality rates for local AAPI communities. The Multi-Cancer Early Detection Screening Coverage Act, recently introduced by a bi-partisan group of lawmakers in the Senate and the House, would allow Medicare to cover a new category of cancer screening blood test called multi-cancer early detection, as soon as these tests are approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

MCED could open the door to earlier detection of dozens of cancers that currently lack early detection screenings. By detecting cancer earlier, when it tends to be easier to treat, access to MCED could improve healthcare outcomes for patients and lower treatment costs. This is an incredible advancement in our fight against cancer, but in order for it to really have an impact, we need to ensure the most at-risk patients have access to it. We are asking our Washington delegation to step up in the fight against cancer by supporting this legislation.

Having witnessed the incredible resilience of the AAPI community that has weathered the COVID crisis through greater partnership between neighbors, extra attentiveness to the needs of those most vulnerable among us and a willingness to innovate around an unpredictable moment in history, we’re confident that the community can come together, with some help from Congress, to shape a future healthcare system that doesn’t repeat the mistakes of the past.

Suzanne Pak is the Director of Community and Behavior Health for the Korean Women’s Association. Kristina Adams is owner and executive director of ANSWERS Counseling, a behavioral health agency and social service provider.