Thank you to everyone who attended ADAPT’s 8th Annual Asian Health Symposium (“Equity-Centered Data: Making Communities Visible”) on Tuesday, October 8 at the Tufts Health Sciences Campus! More than 100 community leaders and advocates, researchers, clinicians, and elected officials convened in-person to discuss the importance of data equity, uplifting community voices, and intersectionality. Among those attending were Massachusetts State Senator, Jamie Eldridge, and Boston City Councilor, Ed Flynn.
Keynote speaker Akil Vohra, JD, Director of Policy at AAPI Data, provided key guidance about the implementation of the federal government’s recent SPD15 standards for detailed race/ethnicity data collection. Co-moderator Carolyn Chou, Executive Director of Homes for All Massachusetts, kicked off the panel discussion by grounding our conversation in the hard-fought journey of APIsCAN and community groups that worked closely with Representative Tackey Chan’s office to pass the MA Data Equity Law in 2023. Multidisciplinary panelists Dr. Paul Watanabe, Bethany Li, JD, Dr. Cheryl Clarke, Dr. Robert Goldstein, and Dr. Jenny Chiang provided valuable stories, examples, and recommendations for how to democratize data and ensure that diverse communities are represented and involved in knowledge production.
Breakout groups were led by Jaya Aiyer (Director of APIsCAN), Catherine Chung (Senior Program Manager for Asian Women for Health), and Dr. Tsung Mou (ADAPT Steering Committee member and clinician at Tufts Medicine). These discussion-based sessions helped participants identify strategies for centering community voices, furthering data equity across communities, and building research and data systems that capture intersectionality and structural drivers of health. Thank you to the ADAPT Executive Committee, ADAPT partners, and the CTSI Professional Education team for organizing this year’s Symposium!
Recorded presentations and resources from the day have been published to Tufts CTSI I LEARN, where you can view the opening and keynote remarks, the panel discussion, and key points from breakout group discussions.