(Press-News.org) ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Throughout their lives, Native Hawaiians have higher risks of death than white Americans, according to a University of Michigan study.
The research is the first known study to assess mortality patterns among Native Hawaiians at the national level, including those living outside the state of Hawaii.
The study is published in the November 2010 issue of the American Journal of Public Health, online Sept. 16. It was funded by the National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities, part of the National Institutes of Health.
"Native Hawaiians are far more likely than whites to suffer early death," said demographer Sela Panapasa, an assistant research scientist at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR) and lead author of the article. "Like Black Americans, they are also much more likely than whites to die in mid- and later-life."
Based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics, the study shows that Native Hawaiian infants less than one year old and young people between the ages of 15 and 34 are particularly vulnerable to early death compared with corresponding age groups of white Americans.
"We also found that older Native Hawaiians have higher expected death rates than either Blacks or whites age 65 and over, suggesting that relatively fewer of this group have benefited from the increased longevity enjoyed by the rest of the nation," said Panapasa, who is a Pacific Islander of Polynesian heritage.
"These results support the idea that renewed efforts are needed to better understand the specific causes and risk factors of increased mortality among Native Hawaiians and other high risk minority populations, including Pacific Islanders, Southeast Asians, Native Americans, and Alaskan Natives," Panapasa said. "They should also prompt further investigation into the precursors of premature mortality among Native Hawaiians, including access to health care and prenatal care, socioeconomic status, and the impact of colonization, oppression and other social determinants on health outcomes."
Panapasa's co-authors are Marjorie Mau of the University of Hawaii, David Williams of Harvard University, and James McNally of U-M's ISR.
Pacific Islanders in the United States are a distinct and rapidly growing population, Panapasa noted. Based on the 2000 U.S. Census, there were 874,000 Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in the U.S. Native Hawaiians represent the largest sector (46 percent) of this population.
Until 1996, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders were aggregated with the larger U.S. Asian population. "Because of their relatively small numbers, their social, economic, and health status has been chronically under-represented in national surveys and distinctive patterns have been missed," Panapasa said.
"As the U.S. becomes increasingly diverse both racially and ethnically, this type of analysis allows for new insights into the underpinnings of differences in morbidity and mortality," Panapasa said. "It offers an opportunity to identify how best to reduce health concerns and disparities in racially diverse populations."
###
Panapasa is currently conducting a broader study of Pacific Islander American health, based on a random sample of Tongan and Samoan households in California. The study is being funded by the Asian Pacific Islander American Health Forum (APIAHF).
Established in 1949, the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (ISR) is the world's largest academic social science survey and research organization, and a world leader in developing and applying social science methodology, and in educating researchers and students from around the world. ISR conducts some of the most widely-cited studies in the nation, including the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers, the American National Election Studies, the Monitoring the Future Study, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the Health and Retirement Study, the Columbia County Longitudinal Study and the National Survey of Black Americans. ISR researchers also collaborate with social scientists in more than 60 nations on the World Values Surveys and other projects, and the Institute has established formal ties with universities in Poland, China, and South Africa. ISR is also home to the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the world's largest digital social science data archive. Visit the ISR Web site at http://www.isr.umich.edu for more information.
END
Brussels, 16 September - More than 100 marine scientists, policy makers and members of industry unanimously call for action towards an integrated network of observatories monitoring Europe's seas, at the Marine Board-ESF Forum 'Towards a European Network of Marine Observatories'. This will give reliable, long-term data to underpin science and policy regarding the use of seas for fisheries, aquaculture, energy, shipping, as well as tourism and recreation.
"We should not take for granted the wealth and well-being provided by the seas and oceans" said Lars Horn from the ...
A new research report published today suggests the police service may have a resource in private security that could contribute to savings of up to £1 billion through collaboration and new ways of working as challenged by the Audit Commission and HMIC.
Interviews with police chiefs suggest that while many feel there is untapped potential in using private security as a resource in this testing climate; others feel that the private security sector lacks credibility and closer collaboration could damage the reputation of the police. Key findings include:
Some police ...
AUDIO:
For years, researchers have known that two key proteins tend to characterize Alzheimer's disease in the brain. Amyloid makes up the senile plaques that form in the brains of Alzheimer's...
Click here for more information.
An international team of Alzheimer's disease experts, led by Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has uncovered a gene variation that appears to predict the rate at which Alzheimer's disease will progress.
The investigators report ...
Health experts will today call for a greater prioritization and targeting of aid to save the lives of mothers, newborns, and children in poor countries.
The amount of official development assistance (ODA) to maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) in developing countries doubled between 2003 and 2008, but its ratio to overall aid for health remained static. The US, UK, EU, GAVI and the Global Fund have made the largest absolute increases, while Spain and a number of small bilateral donors including New Zealand and Belgium have made significant percentage increases, ...
SEATTLE –Women are advancing further in school than at any time in recent history, a trend that is having a tremendous impact on child mortality, according to new research from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington.
Between 1970 and 2009, mortality in children under age 5 dropped from 16 million to 7.8 million annually, and IHME researchers estimate that 51% of the reduction can be linked to increased education among women of reproductive age. This means that 4.2 million fewer children died in 2009 because women received ...
Two popular supplements taken by millions of people around the world to combat joint pain, do not work, finds research published on bmj.com today.
The supplements, glucosamine and chondroitin, are either taken on their own or in combination to reduce the pain caused by osteoarthritis in hips and knees.
The researchers, led by Professor Peter Jüni at the University of Bern in Switzerland, argue that given these supplements are not dangerous "we see no harm in having patients continue these preparations as long as they perceive a benefit and cover the cost of treatment ...
Society's attitudes towards dying, death and bereavement need to change if we are to achieve a good death for all, say experts in a special series of articles published on bmj.com today in the first BMJ "Spotlight" supplement.
By 2030 the annual number of deaths around the world is expected to rise from 58 million to 74 million, but too many people still die alone, in pain, without dignity, or feeling alienated.
The articles aim to remedy this by exploring how lessons learnt from end of life care for cancer patients can be adapted for those dying from chronic conditions ...
The increasing commercialisation of science is restricting access to vital scientific knowledge and delaying the progress of science, claim researchers on bmj.com today.
Varuni de Silva and Raveen Hanwella from the University of Colombo in Sri Lanka argue that copyrighting or patenting medical scales, tests, techniques and genetic material, limits the level of public benefit from scientific discovery.
For example, they found that many commonly used rating scales are under copyright and researchers have to pay for their use.
Some genetic tests also carry patents, ...
CLEVELAND – September 16, 2010 – Menachem Shoham, PhD, associate professor and researcher in the department of biochemistry at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, has identified new anti-pathogenic drugs that, without killing the bacteria, render Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) harmless by preventing the production of toxins that cause disease.
Infections of MRSA are a growing public health problem causing 20,000 deaths per year in the U.S. alone. MRSA is the most prevalent bacterial pathogen in hospital settings and in the community ...
Irvine, Calif., Sept. 16, 2010 — UC Irvine researchers have deciphered how lowly fruit flies bred to rapidly develop and reproduce actually evolve over time. The findings, reported in the Sept. 15 online issue of Nature, contradict the long-held belief that sexual beings evolve the same way simpler organisms do and could fundamentally alter the direction of genetic research for new pharmaceuticals and other products.
"This is actually decoding the key DNA in the evolution of aging, development and fertility," said ecology & evolutionary biology professor Michael Rose, ...