{"id":216454,"date":"2025-05-21T11:57:39","date_gmt":"2025-05-21T21:57:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/?p=216454"},"modified":"2025-05-21T11:57:39","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T21:57:39","slug":"health-disparities-climb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/2025\/05\/21\/health-disparities-climb\/","title":{"rendered":"Rising health disparities statewide, <abbr>UHERO<\/abbr> survey finds"},"content":{"rendered":"<span class=\"span-reading-time rt-reading-time\" style=\"display: block;\"><span class=\"rt-label rt-prefix\">Reading time: <\/span> <span class=\"rt-time\"> &lt; 1<\/span> <span class=\"rt-label rt-postfix\">minute<\/span><\/span><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/manoa-gnc-stethoscope-health-xray.jpeg\" alt=\"blur background of doctor working in office analyzing x-ray medical picture with stethoscope on desk in foreground\" width=\"676\" height=\"381\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-195710\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/manoa-gnc-stethoscope-health-xray.jpeg 676w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/manoa-gnc-stethoscope-health-xray-300x169.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/manoa-gnc-stethoscope-health-xray-130x73.jpeg 130w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 676px) 100vw, 676px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A new report from the University of <span aria-label=\"Hawaii\">Â鶹´«Ã½<\/span> Economic Research Organization (<abbr>UHERO<\/abbr>) reveals deepening disparities in health, access to care, and basic needs across <span aria-label=\"Hawaii,\">Â鶹´«Ã½,<\/span> including that almost 40&#37; of young adults are unable to access mental healthcare. <a href=\"https:\/\/uhero.hawaii.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/HawaiisHealthAndWellbeingJourneyOverTime.pdf\">Read the full report<\/a> (<small><abbr title=\"portable document format\">PDF<\/abbr><\/small>).<\/p>\n<p>The <abbr>UHERO<\/abbr> Rapid Health Survey has tracked more than 2,000 adults statewide since 2022. The most recent results from December 2024 show:<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_209335\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-209335\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/manoa-psychology-mental-health-health-care-workers-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"medical tools on a wall\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-209335\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/manoa-psychology-mental-health-health-care-workers-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/manoa-psychology-mental-health-health-care-workers-130x73.jpg 130w, https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/manoa-psychology-mental-health-health-care-workers.jpg 676w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-209335\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Photo credit: Abby Anaday\/Unsplash)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Declining health: Only 40&#37; of residents rate their health as excellent or very good\u2014down from 44&#37; in 2023. Among Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (<abbr>NHPI<\/abbr>) and low-income respondents, ratings dropped from 40&#37; to 23&#37;&#8212;a 17 percentage point decrease in 18 months.<\/li>\n<li>Mental Health Strain: 31&#37; report symptoms of depression; 1 in 10 low-income individuals show severe symptoms. Those who missed needed mental healthcare rose from 5&#37; (mid-2023) to 22&#37; (December 2024)&#8212;a 17 point increase. For young adults aged 18&#9211;34, the rate surged from 8&#37; to 39&#37;&#8212;a 31 point increase.<\/li>\n<li>Barriers to care: Mental healthcare access worsened significantly, especially among young adults (39&#37; unable to access care).<\/li>\n<li>Food and housing insecurity: Nearly 30&#37; report low or very low food security, and one-third live in rental or unstable housing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The report calls for equity-driven policy solutions, expanded community health services, and stronger investment in housing, food security and real-time data systems to guide public health decisions. <abbr>UHERO<\/abbr> created an <a href=\"https:\/\/analytics.uhero.hawaii.edu\/health\/rapid-survey\/overall\/health\">online interactive dashboard<\/a> for the findings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Worsening health and rising care gaps highlight urgent equity challenges statewide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":195710,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[301,1697,33,165,1157,343],"class_list":["post-216454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research","tag-college-of-social-sciences","tag-community-health","tag-hawaiian","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-uhero","entry","has-media"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/manoa-gnc-stethoscope-health-xray.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216454"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":216461,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216454\/revisions\/216461"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hawaii.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}