Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Blog

Nominate a White House Champion of Change for AAPI Affordable Care Act Outreach

For too long, many members of the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander community have lacked access to quality, affordable health care. Consider this: one in four Korean Americans is uninsured; nearly 40% of Asian American women over the age of 40 don’t get routine mammograms; one in four Asian Americans over the age of 18 – and one in three Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders – have not seen a doctor in the last year.

The Affordable Care Act provides an opportunity to provide nearly two million uninsured Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders with quality, affordable health care – but these individuals won’t gain access to affordable health care unless they know about the benefits of the Act and how to enroll for coverage.

Since open enrollment in the Health Insurance Marketplace kicked off on October 1, 2013, thousands of community advocates, direct service providers, and community based organizations have stepped up to help AAPIs gain access to health insurance, many for the first times in their lives. They have knocked on doors, educated their friends and neighbors, and helped individuals and families enroll through HealthCare.gov.

The dedication, commitment, and passion of these “Champions of Change” is worth celebrating – and that’s why we need your help!

We’re asking YOU to nominate an individual or organization  as a “White House Champion of Change” for their work to educate AAPIs on the Affordable Care Act.  You can nominate Affordable Care Act navigators or consumer assisters, direct service providers, staff of community-based organizations, and other individuals or entities that have focused their Affordable Care Act outreach and enrollment efforts on ensuring that AAPIs will fully benefit from health reform. We need your help to nominate the leaders and heroes who have developed best practices that contributed to the success of Affordable Care Act outreach for the AAPI community.

There are three main categories that you can nominate someone for:

1. Educators, Assisters, and Navigators. Recognizing individuals who have gone above and beyond the call of duty to educate, assist, and enroll AAPI individuals and families. Their efforts have helped AAPIs understand the Affordable Care Act and ensured that they benefit from this historic law.   
2. Emerging Community Leaders. Individuals and organizations focused on emerging communities, for example, small, rural, and newly immigrated AAPI communities. These leaders have gone the extra step to ensure that limited English proficient, newly arrived immigrant and refugee families, and AAPI individuals in locations without access to navigators able to provide in-language support, can learn about and enroll in health insurance plans.
3. Expert Communicators. Individuals who have developed top-notch outreach and communication strategies to ensure that AAPIs can read, hear, and learn about the benefits of the Affordable Care Act. Their communications strategies included activities such as developing in-language resources, developing written, oral, and media-friendly materials, and working with community groups, faith communities, and ethnic media to reach AAPI communities across the country.  

When sending in your nominations, please describe the individuals and communities that the Champion of Change has helped, providing as much detail as possible. In addition, make sure to highlight the best practices they used to be creative, effective, and impactful in their Affordable Care Act education, outreach, enrollment, and/or communication efforts. 

Nominate an AAPI Affordable Care Act Outreach Champion of Change

NOTE: Nominations are now due no later than Wednesday, March 5, 2014.

Gautam Raghavan is an Advisor in the White House Office of Public Engagement.

Increasing Federal Agency Outreach to Limited English Proficient Communities

WHIAAPI Executive Director Kiran Ahuja speaks to federal representatives kicking off a day-long summit on how to improve federal outreach to AAPI limited English proficient (LEP) communities. (Photo courtesy of Rebecca Lee) January 31, 2014.

Last week, the White House Office of Public Engagement and White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (WHIAAPI) convened a day-long summit for federal agencies to discuss how to improve outreach to limited English proficient (LEP) communities.

Executive Order 13166 – “Improving Access to Services for Persons with Limited English Proficiency” – requires federal agencies to examine the services they provide, identify any need for services to LEP individuals, and develop and implement a system to ensure meaningful access. And the statistics are compelling:  1 in 3 AAPIs is LEP.  Being LEP means you are less likely to seek medical care; report positive health care experiences; or even access government economic opportunities such as small business loans.   

 Language access has been a priority from day one at WHIAAPI. When the President signed the Executive Order reestablishing WHIAAPI, he stated, “No community should be invisible to its government”.  This statement has been WHIAAPI’s guiding light. In April 2010, less than 4 months after I became Executive Director, the BP Oil Spill devastated the Gulf Coast, affecting thousands of people, including hundreds of Southeast Asians who have lived in the Gulf for decades and made their living off the waters of the Gulf Coast. WHIAAPI deployed staff to the Gulf to address the concerns and needs of the AAPI community impacted by the spill. As a result, the first federal-wide language translation clearinghouse was established, in which all materials produced for the oil spill were translated into seven languages.

Since then, in partnership with the Department of Justice and other agencies, we have made great progress around language access.  Agencies have increased the number of in-language publications, done inventories of bilingual staff, created video vignette training series, or built stronger ties to ethnic media. 

And for many of us, it is personal.  Many of the federal employees at the summit said they have family or friends who speak another language other than English at home, and many said they have had to translate or interpret for family members. As the Census has shown, more than 57 million people speak a language other than English at home.

We are also particularly proud of WHIAAPI’s recent series of in-language Google+ Hangouts on the Affordable Care Act for top AAPI LEP populations with the highest rates of being uninsured: Korean, Vietnamese, and Chinese. Google+ Hangouts can be a low-cost and extremely effective alternative to reaching a large number of AAPIs who are LEP.  What is great about these Hangouts is that community members can continue to access themas an important federal resource. 

At the summit, we challenged our federal partners to do even more for AAPI LEP communities, such as translating additional documents in AAPI languages, hosting an in-language Google Hangout, or thinking creatively on how we can share resources across federal agencies.

We know that in a few short decades, the AAPI population will double.  My hope is that together, we stay ahead of this curve, and live by the ideals espoused by our President, “that no community should be invisible to its government” and that the federal government - and its many resources and services - should not be invisible to LEP communities.

Kiran Ahuja is Executive Director of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.