South Asian Health. From Research to Practice and Policy: An Overview

The US South Asian population has grown tremendously, and is now over 2.5 million. South Asians often face tremendous cultural, socioeconomic, linguistic and structural obstacles to good health, and face staggering cardiovascular disease (CVD) and cancer risk. Coupled with this is a paucity of detailed data on the population’s unique CVD and cancer risk profiles, etiologic mechanisms, and effective interventions to address South Asian health disparities. This data gap compelled an initiative to develop more targeted research and evidence-based practice and policy approaches. The South Asian Health Initiative (SAHI), a community based participatory research partnership between the Immigrant Health and Cancer Disparities Center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer and the South Asian Council for Social Services (SACSS), and the Palo Alto Medical Foundation Research Institute thus partnered to effect the first national South Asian translational research endeavor, South Asian Health: From Research to Practice and Policy, summarized in this paper.