Ten staff and community members from Asian & Pacific Islander Wellness Center in San Francisco took part in the National AAPI House Party. A&PI Wellness Center is a health services, education, research and policy organization dedicated to educating, supporting, empowering and advocating for A&PIs communities—particularly A&PIs living with or at risk for HIV/AIDS.

We were thrilled to hear from Kalpen Modi and Representatives Honda and Chu about the current state of A&PI affairs at the national level. Many of our clients are immigrants, and we were excited to hear about the grassroots movement against Arizona’s new illegal immigration legislation presented by Marissa Graciosa.

Two topics were discussed after the call: Immigration and health disparities. With the recent change in the HIV travel ban, we are unsure how new immigrants to the US would be able to access programs. In California, programs that many of our clients access, including the Cash Assistance Program for Recent Immigrants and Medi-Cal may be affected by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new budget. These already proposed cuts that A&PIs access, combined with new possible cuts to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program may adversely affect our clients. These two issues will likely converge, compounding existing health disparities in our community.

HIV and Hepatitis B (HBV) are just two of the health disparities that affect A&PI community. Half of all Americans with chronic HBV are A&PI and 1 in 10 A&PIs have chronic HBV. In California, liver cancer is one of the leading causes of death for A&PI men.

1 in 3 A&PIs living with HIV don’t know it. Since A&PIs are perceived to be at low risk for HIV, many don’t know or are told that they don’t need to get tested for HIV. And because A&PI data is often lumped into the “Other” category in many states, it is impossible to know the true impact of HIV on our community.

A lack of providers who are both culturally and linguistically competent, combined with HIV- and HBV-related stigma will only lead to higher rates of liver cancer and HIV/AIDS in the community. We hope to work with other progressive policy organizations in the fight against these two diseases.

We look forward to participating in a week of blog postings on APAP during the week of May 19, which is National Asian & Pacific Islander HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. To find out more about the awareness day, and to connect with us to help end HIV-related stigma, please visit the Banyan Tree Project website.