Center in the News

Data disaggregation is important to truly understand the needs of the many communities under the umbrella term: AAPI, said Riti Shimkhada, a senior research scientist at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. “You can take that information and start to drive community action or interventions to address those very specific needs,” she said.

“California is home to such a diverse group of Asian Americans, so with that, I think our results are very salient to other places where they’re not able to capture all the different Asian subpopulations,” Rita Shimkhada, PhD, a senior research scientist at UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and lead researcher, told SeniorsMatter. “It’s been one of the critical data sources for this body of literature out there on Asian American subgroups and Native Pacific Islander research.”

“We know it’s a common misconception that Asians are doing better than other racial groups,” Riti Shimkhada, the study’s lead researcher and a senior research scientist at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, told NBC Asian America. “There’s much that we don’t know about our older adults, and these results show they aren’t doing as well as people may perceive."

Clinical and public health professionals have been gearing up to take care of the growing aging population, yet not much is known on how best to support the needs of older adults,” Riti Shimkhada, PhD, a senior research scientist at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, told Healio.