ABSTRACT
Visibility of Native Hawaiian health issues and needs has been limited, largely because of the lack of disaggregated data. Before 1997, the U.S. Census Bureau aggregated data for Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (NHPI) with Asian Americans, thus masking important differences in health and socioeconomic status (Stafford, 2010). Among the many gains made from the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20th century was an improved approach to collecting and reporting federal data so that the government could more accurately quantify America’s diversity. By the mid-1970s, with Statistical Policy Directive Number 15 (i.e., Directive 15), the Office of Management and Budget instituted an important system for documenting racial data. This directive set for the first time a benchmark measure for race and ethnicity in data collection that all federal agencies were required to follow. Five categories of race and ethnicity reporting were created: American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian or Pacific Islander, Black, Hispanic, and White. Following the directive’s issuance, the 1980 Census was the first to count populations based on these categories. In 1997, strong arguments were also made to recognize the special situation of Native Hawaiians as Indigenous persons.
