Increasing the visibility of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islanders in substance use research: A call to action

Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (AA/NH/PI) are one of the most diverse racial and ethnic groups in the U.S., encompassing origins from over forty countries. Historical biases stereotyping AA/NH/PI as "model minorities" compounded with familial norms of privacy regarding mental health in these communities has reduced the presence of AA/NH/PI in substance use treatment and research. This has led many individuals in U.S. society to inaccurately construe that AA/NH/PI lack mental health difficulties. In addition, although the term AA/NH/PI was developed to increase within-group solidarity and cohesion, the reductionism of categorizing AA/NH/PI into a single racial/ethnic group obscures the corresponding subjectivities of distinct AA/NH/PI subgroups. Such reductionism overshadows the underrepresentation of specific AA/NH/PI subgroups in substance use research, practice, and as investigators and students in the field. In this commentary, we, a group of AA substance use investigators, examine extant research on AA/NH/PI substance use and call to attention the underrepresentation of AA/NH/PI in the field of substance use: (1) as a diverse community understudied; (2) as investigators underfunded; (3) and as students under-supported. AA/NH/PI may be one of the fastest growing racial/ethnic groups in the United States, but because of structural inequities which forego seeing some AA/NH/PI as having minoritized identities, we have become invisible.