Graphic of the week: Wide differences in uninsured rate among Asian Ohioans by ancestry

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Data included in HPIO’s 2026 Health Value Dashboard shows that while Asian Ohioans overall perform well on indicators such as insurance coverage, Thai, Bhutanese, Pakistani and Bangladeshi Ohioan communities face additional barriers, as illustrated above.

Asian Ohioans represent many ethnicities and cultural backgrounds. When data groups these communities together, it can mask important differences in experience and opportunity.
 
Improving data collection, such as oversampling smaller populations, can ensure data better reflects the realities of Ohioans across the state.
 
“Robust and representative data is vital for understanding the health and well-being of all Ohioans,” the Dashboard states. “Yet many publicly available data sources do not include enough detail to capture the full range of experiences across the state. Recent federal policy decisions have further limited access to data for certain topics and populations.”
 
Public and private partners can strengthen data quality and availability by:

• Consistently collecting and reporting disaggregated data across key demographic factors, including race and ethnicity, income, geography, disability status, sexual orientation and gender identity
• Oversampling groups with smaller population sizes to ensure that these groups are accurately represented in the data and to better understand overlapping barriers
• Providing local data at the county, zip code and/or census tract levels, when possible
• Offering training on demographic data collection to reduce missing or incomplete data