Arab American Health Research: Primary and Secondary Data Sources

Abstract

The exclusion of an Arab American category from the US decennial census has resulted in public health consequences that have reverberated across multiple fields, primarily due to the lack of datasets on Arab Americans available for analysis. In attempting to understand the key primary and secondary data sources driving research in Arab American health, a thorough review of Arab American literature on mortality, morbidity, health behaviors, and stress was completed. This review confirmed the lack of local, state, and national primary (designed and collected by the researcher with a specific objective) and secondary (collected for general use, without one specific objective informing the questions) datasets on Arab Americans. Certain states, such as Michigan and California, have led the way in Arab American public health research, both due to the larger populations of Arab American residents as well as state-wide efforts to conduct specific Arab American research. However, in most cases, primary datasets are limited in size and generalizability, while secondary datasets identify Arab American subjects only indirectly. Certain methods have been used to identify Arab Americans within these secondary datasets, including name lists, ancestry, and place of birth, allowing for significant advancements in the field, albeit hindered by the inability to consistently identify Arab American subjects from method to method. Finally, those studies that have utilized primary datasets or successfully identified Arab American subjects within secondary datasets carry a consistent theme of statistical and clinical discrepancies in health behaviors and outcomes between Arab Americans and non-Hispanic whites, indicating that the categorization of Arab Americans as non-Hispanic whites will continue to mask critical health disparities.