Revisions to race & ethnicity at federal level (USA)

Show & Tell
1

Hi there,
There have been some interesting discussions in the forum lately on race & ethnicity and I want to thank everyone that’s contributed so far - I find the conversations super useful to bring back to my organization as we decide how to handle similar situations.

But also! The US finally has updated guidance around collecting and reporting race & ethnicity. The Federal Register directive has a TON more detail but the press release summarizes it nicely.
[OMB Publishes Revisions to Statistical Policy Directive No. 15: Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity | OMB | The White House](OMB Published Revisions to Statistical Policy Directive No 15)
Working for an org that reports/rolls up data to a federal level, I’m glad we have updated minimum standards we can look to.

2 Likes
2

Very helpful–thank you for sharing!

2 Likes
3

Thanks for sharing. I work with small-medium nonprofits and municipalities and am trying to wrap my head around the impacts of this for them in the world of health equity. Surely as this is implemented at the federal level we will have more informative data about SDOH & outcomes by race/ethnicity. My understanding is that this action doesn’t mandate state-level Medicaid offices to act differently though many may choose to. Any thoughts on the impact on health equity at the local level?

4

Just joined the forum (used to be in the Slack a while back) and my question is related to this. Posting here in case you have any thoughts @ccadenhead, though welcome feedback that I should post this elsewhere since this is an old thread and I’m new here!

I have been working to implement this new federal guidance at a US workforce dev. client of mine. We’ve just analyzed all of the open-ended responses we received before making the change and there are a couple common responses that we don’t feel are well represented in the new guidance and I’m curious if you have any thoughts. The responses are:

  • Caribbean (appended sometimes with Jamaican and West Indian), West Indian, and Indo-Caribbean
  • Central Asian (appended sometimes with Caucasian, Uzbekistan, Turkmen, Kyrgyz)

Curious if anyone has advice on how folks with these identities would respond to the new federally recommended question or ideas to consider for next steps. Again, there is a need to be able to roll up fully for reporting which we’re trying to balance with being as inclusive as possible.

5

Hi Jess,
That’s a tough call because those specific examples really could go a few different ways. It looks to me like the categories are roughly separated by continent, but that Asia-Europe boundary seems pretty squishy, and Caribbean is possibly a blend of 3, 5, or more groups. A few specific island are called out, though that’s pretty general.

There’s no “Different Identity” or “Prefer not to” option in the minimum list, but do you know if your client’s reporting documents offer those anyway (my County-level reporting has several ways to say “No”)? It might be that that in the case where someone doesn’t choose one of the minimum (7), they are assigned one of the no-response categories because we just can’t assume. I would guess you’d have to work with the client to create a policy and stick to it. As you probably saw ,the Register simply says: "When coding write-in data, imputing missing data, or otherwise editing responses, agencies must adopt practices that maximize comparability between data collected on forms and surveys with and without write-in fields. …".

I think I mentioned in a different post that I’m working on transitioning my org from a single write-in box to this new format for exactly the conundrum you present–I am extremely uncomfortable choosing a box for someone else. Clients should be presented with the options and choose for themselves.

I don’t think I’ve answered your question at all but maybe it’s food for thought for others with far more experience than me to jump in. :slight_smile: I just happened to searching for this info a lot lately. ETA: reiterating that this is relevant for USA. Would be curious how other countries address this though.

Sounds like you’re familiar with the document but as reference for other forum readers, I’ll paste in the full text from the document. It focuses a lot on “origins.”
[Emphasis is my own]

1. Categories and Definitions

The minimum categories for data on race and ethnicity for Federal statistics, program administrative reporting, and civil rights compliance reporting are defined as follows:

American Indian or Alaska Native. Individuals with origins in any of the original peoples of North, Central, and South America, including, for example, Navajo Nation, Blackfeet Tribe of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation of Montana, Native Village of Barrow Inupiat Traditional Government, Nome Eskimo Community, Aztec, and Maya.

Asian. Individuals with origins in any of the original peoples of Central or East Asia, Southeast Asia, or South Asia, including, for example, Chinese, Asian Indian, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean, and Japanese.

Black or African American. Individuals with origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa, including, for example, African American, Jamaican, Haitian, Nigerian, Ethiopian, and Somali.

Hispanic or Latino. Includes individuals of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Salvadoran, Cuban, Dominican, Guatemalan, and other Central or South American or Spanish culture or origin.

Middle Eastern or North African. Individuals with origins in any of the original peoples of the Middle East or North Africa, including, for example, Lebanese, Iranian, Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi, and Israeli.

Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. Individuals with origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands, including, for example, Native Hawaiian, Samoan, Chamorro, Tongan, Fijian, and Marshallese.

White. Individuals with origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, including, for example, English, German, Irish, Italian, Polish, and Scottish.

6

Hi Chris - Thank you so much for such a thoughtful reply! The guidance doc is so long–it’s helpful to see some of the pieces that stood out to you. Here’s where we’re landing, at least in the immediate term:

  1. Add Central Asian as a separate category. This org already has separate categories for South Asian, Southeast Asian, and East Asian in their legacy data collection practices and we had agreed we would keep collecting this way and roll up to “Asian” for any external reporting that needs to tie to the federal guidelines. That new category will roll up to “Asian” with the rest for some reporting purposes.
  • I felt comfortable with this approach because in the section of the document summarizing public input gathered in the revision process, I found this, “Comments from organizations that work with Central Asian populations in the United States explicitly requested “Central Asia” be included in the Asian definition.”
  1. Add an open ended optional question after the required select all that apply one that says, “If you’d like, please share any additional details about your race, ethnicity, cultural background, or national origin that are important to you and weren’t captured in the previous question”
  • the purpose of this question is to create a more positive and inclusive participant experience and can be referenced by staff as helpful for engaging with individuals; the intent is not to use this in any reporting in the immediate term, though we can analyze the data on an ad-hoc basis over time to better understand the population served for internal purposes
7

Those seem like excellent, well-reasoned parameters! Thanks for the follow-up!