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Dr. Ho Luong Tran will assume leadership of the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum (APIAHF) in October. She hopes to make the Forum more nationally accessible and widely recognized.
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Putting Our Health Center Stage
Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum’s new CEO wants to expand
By Soo Ji Min
Special to AsianWeek
When Dr. Ho Luong Tran first settled in San Francisco’s Bay Area in 1979, she had surrendered all her possessions, risked her life and renounced her home country of Vietnam. She will return in October — 23 years later and no longer seeking refuge — to assume leadership of the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum (APIAHF). As the new president and chief executive officer, Tran, 55, seeks to increase the visibility and credibility of the San Francisco-based national advocacy organization that promotes the health and well-being of Asian Pacific American communities.
“I feel that the forum has to be known by more people, not just the pan-Asian and Pacific Islander but the general population,” said Tran. “I want to show the importance of the organization.”
National Expansion
Expanding APIAHF’s reach is a priority for Tran, who currently serves as special assistant for Asian affairs and refugee health program administrator for the Illinois Department of Public Health’s Center for Minority Health. She would like to open an APIAHF chapter or office, or build partnerships with existing community-based health organizations (CBOs), in the Midwest.
“Once the Midwest is taken care of, we can use the same model with other states that have large concentrations of Asians,” said Tran. “Then we will deal with the states with smaller populations. Regardless of the numbers, Asians need help and information.”
According to Tran, much-needed services like prenatal care and HIV-AIDS prevention are available but aren’t accessed by APAs. “There isn’t enough outreach on the policy level or on the national level,” said Tran. “We might have a prenatal clinic, but if people don’t know what is being offered and that it is to their benefit, they won’t go. The HIV-AIDS rate is increasing among our population, but the information is not there because we assume people know [about the risks]. I would like to empower the Asian population so that they can take the information and be proactive.”
Meanwhile Heng Lam Foong, program director for Los Angeles-based PALS for Health, a group that provides healthcare interpretation services, would like to see APIAHF’s new president spend some quality time in California. “She should start by learning about community issues here and who the gatekeepers are,” said Foong. “She could have forums in different areas of California and then take it to other states.”
Any plans for expansion or empowerment, however, will require greater funds and resources. Currently, 49 percent of APIAHF’s $3.3 million annual budget comes from federal government grants and 13 percent from California state government grants. And these days, a tightening of government funds are felt by researchers in California and by non-profit organizations in Chicago.
Funding in Hard Times
“What we are asking for requires more money, and politicians aren’t going to be that receptive to spending money for a relatively small population when there are other priorities right now,” said Marjorie Kagawa-Singer, associate professor in the UCLA School of Public Health’s Department of Community Health Sciences and the UCLA Asian American Studies Center.
Dr. Sid Mohn, president of Chicago-based Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights has had to scale back services and increase operational efficiencies from within to offset funding constraints from multiple sources.
“The past year has been extremely difficult for not-for-profits as a result of the convergence of recessionary trends which impact private foundation giving levels, state government budgetary cutbacks and United Way giving reductions.”
Federal and state fund allocations for healthcare programs often rely on census data to validate need. “We know that a significant portion of our communities were not counted [in the 2000 census],” said Kagawa-Singer. “If you don’t have the correct population, then you can’t calculate disease rates and can’t compare our rate with anyone else’s to show that we have a significant problem. Data collection is fundamental to document health issues in our community.”
Tran would like to decrease the APIAHF’s dependence on government funding. Using a grassroots approach, Tran has her own plans for documenting Asian health issues. She plans to tap local CBOs to collect health data for the populations they serve. “We have to go group by group and do a needs assessment,” explained Tran. “We can do data research by group nationwide so that we can be independent of funding from the federal government. If we rely too much on funding from the government, we will have our hands tied.”
Going Deep
But because the APIAHF is not a direct-service provider, the organization — by default, — must work with local CBOs to collect data. “In that way the Health Forum is invisible,” said Ignatius Bau, deputy director for policy and programs. “Then that also becomes a funding issue and a visibility issue.”
Participants in recent national focus groups measuring the impact of HIV prevention on APA women, then, may not be aware that the APIAHF is compiling the data. So not only is public awareness of APIAHF programming decreased but the viability of the data that is collected also is questioned. “We still have the hurdle and challenge of convincing funders and policy makers that qualitative data is credible,” said Bau.
Researcher Kagawa-Singer agrees: “We do know that research studies on smaller communities are significant but are criticized for not being representative of the larger population or not scientifically sound enough to warrant publication. Then it’s difficult to utilize that data to get additional funding.”
Bau doesn’t foresee APIAH changing its data collection methods: “It’s more of a challenge, not something that will change. It’s a problem for a lot of national organizations that have a big name and come into local communities without local connections.”
And once a program’s credibility and success are proven, funding is possible, said Tessie Guillermo, who served as APIAHF’s executive director since its inception in 1986 until her departure in May. “But you have to go deep and that takes a lot of time,” she added. Guillermo left the APIAHF to become president and CEO of San Francisco-based Community Technology Foundation of California. Tran will begin her new position at APIAHF on Oct. 7.
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