Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islanders: Disparities in the Prevalence of Multiple Chronic Conditions

Purpose: To examine multimorbidity prevalence by race/ethnicity and unique health disparities for Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islanders (NHPI). Design: Cross-sectional study. Setting: This study uses combined data from the 2014 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) and the 2014 NHPI-NHIS. Sample: 38,965 adults, including a representative sample of 2,026 NHPIs. Measures: Self-reported diagnoses of ten chronic conditions and race/ethnicity, including Non-Hispanic (NH) Whites, NH Blacks, NH Asians, NH NHPIs, Hispanics and NH Mixed Race. Covariates include age, sex, marital status, education, family income, and employment status. Analysis: We used multinomial logistic regression models to evaluate the adjusted association between race/ethnicity and number of chronic conditions: none, 1, and ≥ 2 (multimorbidity). Results: Compared to Whites, Asians and Hispanics (aRRR = 0.39, P <.001 and aRRR = 0.59, P <.001) had significantly lower odds of having multimorbidity relative to no chronic condition. In contrast, Black Americans and NHPIs (aRRR = 1.27, P <.001 and aRRR = 1.22, P <.05) had significantly higher odds of multimorbidity compared to Whites. Of note, NHPIs showed significantly higher odds of multimorbidity compared to Asians (aRRR = 3.07, P <.001). Conclusion: Our findings highlight significantly higher risk of multimorbidity for NHPIs relative to Whites as well as Asians. This underscores the importance of disaggregating NHPI data from Asians as a whole. Future studies should incorporate additional social factors relevant to the NHPI community.