Federal data collection methods that lump diverse ethnic groups into five broad racial categories are obscuring life-threatening health disparities affecting minority communities across the United States.
When government data showed Asian Americans had low COVID-19 mortality rates, the numbers masked a devastating reality. Filipino nurses, who comprise 4% of the country’s nursing workforce, were dying at alarming rates during the pandemic. The transnational organization AF3IRM launched a digital memorial wall after discovering the high proportion of Filipino nurses among COVID nurse deaths, a crisis buried under the single category of Asian American.
Ana Ortizoga, a health equity advisor at the Pan American Health Organization, explained that aggregated data conceals critical problems. “Many disparities in health, usually ascribed to socioeconomic status, sometimes mask deeper inequalities related to racisms or other forms of discrimination,” Ortizoga said. “These inequities can be uncovered when you further disaggregate data by categories of race and ethnicity.”
American Indian and Alaska Native populations demonstrate particularly stark disparities: 1.7 times the suicide rate and 6.5 times the alcohol-related deaths compared to non-Hispanic white people. AI/AN women have the second-highest maternal mortality rate after Black women, though limited data collection hampers efforts to address these deaths.
The broad Black category similarly obscures differences between African Americans, African immigrants, and Afro-Caribbeans, who have distinct health-related and linguistic characteristics. Middle Eastern and North African individuals forced to check the white box face documented barriers accessing needed healthcare.
Katie Weng, a data science major at Carnegie Mellon University, noted that policymakers often work with oversimplified data that doesn’t reflect important context, perpetuating negligence with tangible impacts on minority communities.
See: “Buried in the numbers: the cost of racial data aggregation” (Feb 9, 2026)
