Extensive New Survey on NYC’s Asian American Community Finds Food Access and Language Services Among Top Concerns

NEW YORK (August 30, 2022) --To better understand the needs of the New York City Asian American community during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Center for the Study of Asian American Health (CSAAH) at NYU Grossman School of Medicine (NYU CSAAH), the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families (CACF), Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC), and 28 partnering community-based organizations launched The NYC COVID-19 Community Resources and Needs Assessment (CHRNA) survey in the spring of 2021.

The survey —  which was administered online between April 23, 2021 to November 5, 2021 — found that Asian American New Yorkers were deeply impacted by the pandemic and resulting economic downturn. In fact, the pandemic exposed longstanding structural issues that prevented New York City’s Asian American communities from accessing healthcare, unemployment and housing and food support well before the COVID-19 pandemic began affecting the United States in 2020. Notably, the report found that:

• While COVID-19 vaccination acceptance is high, COVID-19 vaccine access continued to be a barrier for Asian Americans – particularly in the Bangladeshi and Nepali communities due to a lack of vaccine access and translated materials on how to obtain a vaccine.

• Among those needing assistance during the pandemic (77%), accessing food was the most cited concern (51%), followed by housing (26%) and paying for utility bills (26%).

• The economic impact was stark. Over 1 in 3 Asian Americans reported loss of income (39%) and being worried about going to work (39%), and 1 in 3 reported lost work/jobs (33%)

• Nearly 1 in 4 (27%) adults reported that they did not have regular access to timely, accurate information during the pandemic in their preferred language.

Collaborating with community-based organizations and supporting language access services are both key to addressing these issues, both immediately and in the long term. The report recommends addressing these disparities by:

The survey results also further illustrated how existing issues affecting Asian American New Yorkers were exacerbated during the pandemic. To address systemic issues like the lack of clear, disaggregated data on the Asian American population and the continued need for in-language support for those from immigrant and limited English backgrounds, the report recommends:

• Improving primary data collection efforts of city and state entities to better reach Asian American communities to ensure Asian American communities need not rely largely on academic and grassroots efforts for this data.

• Supporting efforts that provide disaggregated data on Asian Americans by ethnic group and preferred language.

• Prioritizing tangible support to offer in-language community-facing services and resources and providing funding to community-based organizations who are already providing services in community members’ preferred languages to bolster organizational infrastructure and capacity. 

• Broadening language and interpreter services and availability of translated written materials in health care and public service settings to ensure equal and timely access to care and information.

• Regularly provide messaging to ensure immigrants know that they are able to access public benefits and COVID-19 testing and vaccination, regardless of health insurance coverage or citizenship status.

• Expand the eligibility for public benefits and social services to all, regardless of citizenship and job type statuses (e.g., part-time or temporary status, or job type). 

“NYU CSAAH is extremely proud to have had this opportunity to work collaboratively and inclusively with our partners to respond to community needs, questions, and to address significant gaps in the data to understand the experiences of Asian American immigrant communities during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in the New York City metro area.” said Simona Kwon, NYU CSAAH Director and Associate Professor, NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

“This extensive new survey illustrates why it is essential for public health researchers and policy makers to center the voices of community members – particularly those from immigrant and limited English proficiency backgrounds –  while creating public health policy,” said CACF’s co-executive directors Anita Gundanna and Vanessa Leung. “We’d like to thank NYU CSAAH, CPC and all of our community partners for their work in the implementation of this survey. We hope that the findings will help provide a blueprint for how to include immigrant and limited English speaking families in policies around public health in a way that ensures they are not left behind due to language and other barriers.”

The collaboration between NYU CSAAH, CACF, CPC and the survey’s 28 community-based partners was essential to the survey’s success in getting a true understanding of the experiences of Asian Americans in New York City during the pandemic, as was the fact that the survey was translated into 10 Asian languages. 

"We applaud the hard work of the partner organizations, CACF and CPC in their collaboration with NYU CSAAH to collect this information. By prioritizing in-language surveys and trusted community networks, we were able to see the experiences of communities that are otherwise invisible in other needs assessments,” said Stella Yi,  of NYU CSAAH and Associate Professor, NYU Grossman School of Medicine. 

“This report highlights the limitations and potential misrepresentation of the experiences of Asian American community if we simply rely on data that only collect information on English-speaking Asian Americans and report findings for the overall Asian American group (versus by disaggregated Asian American ethnic groups). I would also underscore the importance of directly engaging with historically excluded communities, in their preferred languages, to ensure that data and data-driven strategies are equitable,” said Lan Doan of NYU CSAAH and Assistant Professor, NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

"We are thrilled to release this final report as the result of a partnership with the NYU Center for the Study of Asian American Health (NYU CSAAH) and the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families (CACF). We thank community partners that detailed the experiences of the Asian American community during the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, including issues around vaccine access, food insecurity, language justice, and access to public benefits,” said Wayne Ho, President and CEO of the Chinese-American Planning Council (CPC). “CPC served over 125,000 community members throughout the pandemic, so our own experience aligns with this report’s findings on the desperate need for significant resources and support across the city’s diverse and fast growing Asian American community. We hope policymakers and elected officials respond with swift and meaningful action to these findings." 

This project was supported in part with funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

For more information or to be connected to any of the survey’s authors or partner organizations, please contact Lakshmi Gandhi at lgandhi@cacf.org