NEW YORK (March 25, 2022) -- The COVID-19 pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on the New York Asian American and Pacific Islander community that requires acknowledgement and equitable support and resources to support communities’ recovery by leadership throughout New York State. This urgent need for support is why the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families (CACF) and our 50+ Members and Partners are urging New York State’s lawmakers to renew their commitment to public health and creating a healthier New York State by passing the $64.5 Million NY State AAPI Equity Budget.

“Since the earliest days of the pandemic, our community-based organizations have been on the front lines of this public health crisis by providing New York’s most vulnerable residents with PPE, updated guidance on COVID prevention and treatment in their native languages and assistance with navigating our bureaucratic healthcare system,” said CACF’s co-executive directors Anita Gundanna and Vanessa Leung. “But despite the fact that our CBOs were playing a critical role in keeping New Yorkers healthy, the level of support and funding they have received from the State continues to lag behind. As our community continues to recover from the pandemic, the health needs of AAPI New Yorkers must be centered with a concrete commitment to provide the community with vaccine access and in-language support.”

While much has been made in the media about the high COVID-19 vaccination rates amongst Asian Americans, those numbers do not tell the full story. A new report created by the NYU Center for the Study of Asian American Health (CSAAH) in partnership with CACF and the Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC) found that while overall AAPI vaccination rates are exceptionally high, certain communities continue to lag behind due to lack of access to testing sites and accurate information about the vaccine in their native languages. As our health policy coordinator Medha Ghosh recently told a City Council oversight hearing, "Our studies show that Bangladeshi and Nepalese communities are still struggling to get vaccine access."

But the low vaccination rates in those communities is not because of hesitancy or resistance to the vaccine, but because of myths about who is qualified to receive the vaccine and the lack of clear, accurate information about where to obtain it in their native languages. "It's not vaccine hesitancy, but just not knowing where to go and having proper information," Ghosh told the hearing.

Staffers at the South Asian Council for Social Services have seen the consequences of that lack of clear information play out first hand. Since 2021, SACSS has been working with partner organizations and NYC Health + Hospitals to lead educational campaigns and vaccine outreach events in the neighborhoods SACSS serves. As they spoke with community members about the vaccine and their options, they found that many falsely believed that non-citizen immigrants were not permitted to receive the vaccine or also wrongly believed that applying for public benefits like Medicaid would affect their U.S. citizenship prospects. “I was assisting a couple – the husband was 71 and the wife was 68 – who came here right at the start of the pandemic. But throughout 2020, they didn't apply for health insurance. They just stayed indoors then in early 2021 when the vaccine was available to seniors, they still weren’t getting vaccinated,” said Rehan Mehmood, SACSS’s Director of Health Services. After speaking with them, Mehmood discovered that they had been told by their son-in-law that they were not eligible for Medicaid because they had been sponsored for green cards. “So when the vaccine became available, they thought that if they didn’t have health insurance, they couldn't get vaccinated. So this was a couple who wanted the vaccine but falsely thought they were not eligible for it.”

SACSS staff were able to assist the couple both with the Medicaid application process and with making vaccine appointments at a health center in Manhattan. But while this family is now vaccinated, Mehmood notes that misinformation about vaccine access and immigration status continue to persist in the community. Organizations like SACSS — which can offer community members with trusted and bilingual support — are key to breaking through that misinformation cycle, he said.

During the pandemic, AAPI stories were also being erased by the lack of granulated data on race and ethnicity in New York. At the start of the pandemic, the AAPI community struggled to receive targeted COVID relief and resources as a result of an overwhelming narrative in the media that AAPI communities fared better through their compliance and willingness to follow guidelines compared to other communities of color. However, as we’ve seen through community studies and anecdotal evidence, this was not the full picture. A 2021 NYU CSAAH report found that Chinese Americans had the highest mortality COVID mortality rate of all patients in New York City, dying at a 44 percent higher rate than white patients. The pandemic also disproportionately affected New York City’s South Asian community, who had the second highest positivity and hospitalization rates in New York City public hospitals. As a whole, Asian Americans were two times more likely to test positive for COVID compared to white patients, yet less likely to get tested at all due to a lack of access to COVID testing for AAPI New Yorkers. 

New York’s community-based organizations also continue to be there for neighbors as they struggle with the devastating economic and mental health consequences that often followed a COVID-19 diagnosis. After contracting the virus, a client of the Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC) without access to paid medical leave lost their job shortly after their diagnosis, leading to an increasing financial burden from mounting rent and utility bills. After her discharge, she continued to have health issues that prevented her from full employment and accessed pantries and free food distributions to feed herself and her granddaughter. Through CPC’s services, this community elder was able to apply for the The New York State Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) and other cash assistance options to address her rental arrears, which she successfully obtained. CPC then assisted her in seeking part-time work and physical therapy for long COVID symptoms. Caseworkers are also happy to report that this client now participates in physical therapy and is getting mental health support for her depression.

The fact that so many of our Members and Partners provide in-language services and support has proved to be critical over the last two years. “We are representative of our client base; our staff speaks 36 languages, enabling us to serve populations that mainstream providers are largely unable to effectively reach. The NY State Legislature passing the $64.5 Million NY State AAPI Equity Budget Proposal (FY 22-23) would allow the Arab-American Family Support Center (AAFSC) to address the rising and unprecedented needs of immigrant communities,” said Salma Mohamed, Partnership & Capacity-Building Specialist at the Arab-American Family Support Center, who adds that AAFSC provided wraparound support to 10,000 clients in 2021. “We have seen firsthand the devastating and rippling effects of the pandemic on our communities, particularly the Bangladeshi community, who we are working closely with in Briarwood, one of the 33 neighborhoods that the NYC Taskforce for Inclusion and Equity identified as hardest-hit by COVID-19.”

The pandemic also served to magnify existing gaps in the AAPI community when it came to accessing healthcare and insurance. “Our holistic services also include addressing some of the hidden ramifications of the pandemic, particularly for immigrant communities, through case management for domestic violence survivors (including those with little to no English proficiency), food security projects, youth empowerment, adult education classes, mental health counseling, etc. We look forward to scaling those efforts,” Mohamed continued. “The $64.5 Million NY State AAPI Equity Budget Proposal (FY22-23) would enable us, and community-based organizations like us, to continue our work addressing systemic inequities that have only worsened since the onset of the pandemic, from enhancing vaccine access to supporting domestic violence survivors through culturally responsive and linguistically competent means.”