Many federally-sponsored conferences on the health of the Asian and Pacific Islander American population have documented the lack of systematic information on the health of Pacific Islanders and the negative consequences of this deficit on health policy and planning, and ultimately the welfare of Pacific Islanders.

Traditionally, government agencies have aggregated Pacific Islanders with Asian populations for statistical reporting purposes. This artificial grouping has created ongoing measurement problems due to the high level of heterogeneity within the Asian Pacific Islander American (API) category.

The "model minority" myth often erroneously applied to the heterogeneous API population has little or no relevance to the health and SES of Pacific Islanders.

Recently, the Federal Government's Office of Management (OMB) has established a new racial category - Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander (NHPI) and mandated that federal agencies collect and presesnt data on five racial groups instead of four.

This program examines the challenges with measuring the health status of NHPI's and the implications of the OMB decision for future research, health policy and planning.

This program was originally broadcast on June 24, 2005, as a part of the 11th Annual Summer Public Health Research Institute and Videoconference on Minority Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Public Health, Minority Health Project, with the presentation by Sela Panapasa, Ph.D.