To prepare our communities for public health and other national emergencies, the Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum (APIAHF) has collaborated with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health, the National Council of Asian Pacific Islander Physicians, (NCAPIP) and the Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations (AAPCHO) to make sure that information is available to our communities that is language appropriate and takes cultural differences into account.
One of the biggest lessons we learned from the SARS epidemic, and from other national emergencies, such as Hurricane Katrina, is that a lack of information severely slows a community's ability to respond to a crisis. Depending on the crisis, that lack of information can be deadly.
We also know that in a country that is diverse as ours, that public health information cannot be effective if people are unable to understand it. Asian Americans as a group trace our heritage to more than 50 countries and to dozens of distinct ethnic groups. We speak more than 100 different languages and represent a multitude of cultures.
In the event of future public health crises, or a national emergency, we will coordinate our efforts to make information coming from the Federal, State and local Government, as well as from national health and public health organizations available to our communities.
