Healthcare Equity & Access

Every American should be able to see a doctor when they get sick. But for too long, South Asian communities in the U.S. have suffered from persistent inequities that make it hard to access care and truly thrive. We must change that, and work to build a nation with true health equity, where every single American, no matter their race, creed, or gender identity, can have high quality health care from birth.

The Challenge

South Asian communities across the United States face persistent health inequities that go overlooked by our healthcare systems. We’re 4 times as likely as the general public to have heart disease, we’re nearly twice as likely as to have diabetes, and we have higher suicide rates than other groups of Americans. 

The health of our South Asian neighbors, family, and friends are suffering because we have a harder time accessing health care than the rest of the population. We’re more likely than the average American to be uninsured, and significant segments of our communities face language barriers at American hospitals, which do not have adequately trained interpreters in South Asian languages. Worse still, we’re flying a little blind on what the problems in South Asian communities even are, because we’re underrepresented in American health care research and often aggregated into findings on “Asian Americans” as a whole.

The Solution

We believe in true health equity, both in the United States and around the world, to ensure everyone can live healthy, productive, and fulfilling lives.

In the United States, we’re fighting to improve data collection and disaggregation on health access and outcomes specific to the South Asian community, because we know we can’t solve problems if we don’t even know what they are. We’re pushing federal legislation like the Women’s Health Protection Act, and the South Asian Heart Health Act to study and then combat the high incidence rate of heart disease in South Asian Americans.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade and the sweeping abortion bans being enacted across the country prevent thousands of South Asian Americans from accessing the reproductive care they deserve.