Several members of Long Beach’s Filipino community have worried about whether they could afford healthy food over the past year, among other findings, according to the city’s recent Filipino Community Health Needs Assessment — a challenge municipal officials will work to address.
Long Beach is home to more than 20,000 people of Filipino descent, making that community the largest Asian ethnic group in the city. Filipino residents are heavily concentrated in West Long Beach, according to the 2022 Census and California Healthy Places Index.
That’s an area that has historically lacked access to healthy food, with community leaders referring to West Long Beach as a “food desert,” meaning an area that has limited access to affordable and nutritious food.
In the Filipino Community Health Needs Assessment, more than half of respondents said they were worried or stressed about being able to afford nutritious food.
City officials said they will collaborate with community organizations to address these and other health inequities there.
To bridge the data gap and better address emerging health needs the Department of Health and Human Services launched a community health needs assessment in December 2022. The city collaborated with the Filipino Community Advisory Committee to conduct the needs assessment.
Results of the report were presented to the City Council during a meeting last week.
“This is one of the benefits of having our own local public health department; we’re able to do studies and assessments based on local data,” Mayor Rex Richardson said. “It allows us to respond, allocate resources, and meet the needs of the health of our local communities.”
In the report, 53.43% of the 219 survey respondents reported being at least sometimes worried or stressed about being able to afford nutritious meals over the last 12 months, with 5.94% being regularly worried or stressed and 8.68% being always worried.
Community members also mentioned in listening sessions that it’s easier to eat what is readily accessible — and that cheaper sometimes means unhealthier.
In West Long Beach, which has the most dense population of working class and low-income Filipinos in the city, there are frequent requests for food access, said Joselle De Los Reyes, direct services manager for the Filipino Migrant Center.
“Folks have been coming to us saying that a lot of food banks are closing and for immigrant workers that are not able to have high paying jobs, they are really struggling to feed their families,” De Los Reyes said during the council meeting. “This specifically highlights the need for more access in food deserts such as Westside Long Beach.”
The implications are that more resources and healthy alternatives for culturally affirming dishes are needed for the Filipino community.
Because of colonization and food access issues, the Filipino diet has tended to be high in fat and salt, and more discussions and education around preserving culture while creating nutritious meals are needed, the report said.
Community organizations are already beginning to address these issues based on the report’s findings. The Filipino Migrant Center, for example, is hosting a health and wellness workshop series this summer called “Our Health, Our Community,” which will explore the intersection of Filipino food, culture and health through discussions and interactive sessions led by health leaders in the community. The dates for the workshops — for which you can RSVP at tinyurl.com/HealthSeriesFMC — are June 22, July 20 and Aug. 24.
When asked about what is needed in their community, survey respondents also said that they want healthier, safer places to gather, such as parks, gyms, farmer’s markets and grocery stores.
“Going back to the point of food deserts in low-income communities,” De Los Reyes said, “you can really see many of the things that they want to see are tied to food.”
A & F Market, 2569 Santa Fe Ave, is a small grocery store located in West Long Beach. (Photo by Christina Merino, Press-Telegram/SCNG)
Besides nutrition, the community health survey’s focus areas were access to information, environmental justice, mental health and health services, and communication.
In regards to health, high blood pressure (75.8%) is the most common chronic illness among family members as reported by respondents. More than half of the sample also has a family history of diabetes (57.5%). Cancer and heart disease impact the families of roughly 40% and 30% of the survey sample, respectively.
Councilmember Roberto Uranga, who represents District 7, suggested that the city needs to enhance the ability to provide more education and recognition of the effects of high blood pressure, as it appears to be a very high probability in not only the Filipino community but also the Latino community.
In discussing potential causes and barriers to addressing health issues in the Filipino community, one of the phenomena cited by focus group participants was a general apprehension toward health care.
But the most popular method of health management among participants was primary medical care; 63% of the sample reported going to a doctor over the past year. The second most reported method of health management was prayer, at 43%.
“We know that a large majority of the Filipino population relies on faith for support,” said Kimmy Maniquis, executive director of Search to Involve Pilipino Americans, “and we see that prayer in combination with traditional Western medicine being utilized for health management.”
Because of the community’s respect for religious faith as a source of health management, the report said, mobilizing churches and/or faith leaders should be a strength in implementing health interventions.
As for mental health, the 25-44 age group had the highest percentage of people saying they felt the need to seek care, the report said; but despite that, 46% of those still did not seek any help.
Stigma around accessing mental health services within the Filipino Community needs to be reduced, the report said.
“There are also many other factors that prevent people from accessing help, some of which include stigma, cultural values that are related to shame, pride and obligation,” Maniquis said. “Also, the lack of having culturally competent practitioners, providing language services in Tagalog but also including other Filipino languages.”
“What’s really important is how we are disaggregating data and information about our diverse Asian American, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander community,” Councilmember Suley Saro said during the May 14 meeting. “It’s so important to do this because it goes back to being visible and that’s an issue that our communities face and in order to do that we have to gather data and sometimes by ourselves.”
Using the findings and implications from the report, the health department will continue collaborating with the Filipino Advisory Committee to identify short-, medium- and long-term goals to improve the health outcomes for and address the needs of the local Filipino community.
“This is an opportunity for our city now that we have data,” Saro said, “and we could do more research but we have data to begin with for our city to look into ways that we can increase the investment and be proactive in ensuring that there is equitable health access for our Filipino community.”
