A Concentrated Effort

For years, New York health-care providers have treated Asian-Americans afflicted by serious, even life-threatening illnesses with ever-increasing frequency. Many doctors in the nation's largest city agreed that Asians seemed particularly at risk for specific health problems, but there was neither research nor statistics supporting physician observations. In this article, the author describes a pioneering center at New York University that employs a community-based approach to addressing illnesses disproportionately affecting Asian-Americans. Established in 2003, the Center for the Study of Asian American Health (CSAAH) is the only center of its kind at a U.S. academic medical center dedicated solely to evaluating public health issues of this racial group. Soon after CSAAH's inception, which was financed by a National Institutes of Health grant, its scientific efforts began exploring the relationship between viral and bacterial infections and cancer, as well as the risk for cardiovascular disease, among different Asian ethnic groups.