The Surgeon General on the State of APA Health

By Amber Hsiao | Friday, May 25, 2007

AsianWeek spoke to Acting Surgeon General Rear Admiral Kenneth P. Moritsugu, M.D., M.P.H. about the state of Asian American health today. Moritsugu was speaking out at the Asian & Pacific Islander Wellness Center’s Third Annual National Asian & Pacific Islander HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.

What are your priorities with Asian American health?

One of the things we are focused on in the Department of Health and Human Services is prevention. Too many are focused on fixing things after they’re broken, after people get sick. If we could do more in prevention, we would be able to improve the quality of people’s lives, as well as slow down the expanding health budget.

The second focus is public health preparedness. That is all hazards preparedness so we would be better prepared for a natural occurrence, as well as something human-made like bioterrorism. Here in San Francisco, you’ve seen natural occurrences like earthquakes or human accidents such as what happened on the freeway just a few weeks ago. We need to be better prepared to better respond to something of that sort.

The third point is the elimination of health disparities. We’re a very rich nation with great science, but certain population groups don’t have the equivalent health status that others do.

What’s being done about cultural competency and increasing that knowledge among physicians or health professionals?

We’re trying to raise the level of awareness that this is an issue. It’s something that all of us need to address at the federal level, the state level, the professional level, or at the individual level. When you go in to see your health professional, you need to say, "Doctor, I don’t understand. Please explain to me," rather than to just listen, not understand, and walk out. Health literacy is a responsibility for everybody.

A lot of Asian Americans, especially recent immigrants, don’t necessarily feel like they need to use preventive services or access regular points of care.

The message is prevention; the message is testing. A significant number of individuals who have HIV don’t even realize it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now recommending that everyone get an HIV test just as you routinely get blood tests for your blood pressure, diabetes, and cholesterol.

What’s being done about language barriers?

It’s not only the federal government that needs to do something. It needs to be the communities that rise up and say, "We need to have more culturally trained, culturally relevant providers." We need to encourage more individuals who are culturally sensitive to enter the health professions.

This is something that needs to be done across the board. We are doing our part at the federal level by focusing in and putting this issue on the radar screen of people and the community to say that health literacy is important. Health literacy is a multi-way street; it’s not only the sender of the message, but it’s also the receiver of the message and it’s the medium—the way the message gets communicated. It is important to take all these pieces into consideration.

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Originally appeared in AsianWeek Newspaper, National section. See the original article.