Finding the Right Data to Identify Disparities: 

A Case Study from Chinatown Service Center

Background

Chinatown Service Center (CSC) was founded in 1971, to help recent Chinese immigrants navigate the 

local and national systems for visas, citizenship, insurance, housing, and legal issues. It started as a small 

organization operating from a church in downtown Los Angeles. Over time, services broadened to 

include the larger Asian immigrant, Asian American, and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities at five 

locations. Eventually, CSC became a Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC) supported by 

a grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

As a SAMHSA grantee, they were required to develop a Behavioral Health Disparity Impact Statement 

(DIS) which is a data-driven, quality improvement approach to advance equity by identifying the 

populations at highest risk for experiencing behavioral health disparities. The DIS requires grantees to 

describe the disparities in their population of focus and the actions they plan to take to address the 

identified gaps. 

The Problem

CSC used national and state data sets which included the demographic characteristics of their catchment 

area to develop their DIS. The DIS reflected their intention to serve Asian Americans and Pacific 

Islanders, Hispanic, White, and Black/African Americans. The DIS they submitted included characteristics 

of the general population in their catchment area rather than the specific population that CSC serves in 

their local demographic of Chinatown. As their Government Program Officer (GPO) explained, “It was a

generalized DIS.” This limited their ability to point to where the disparity was occurring in access, use, or 

health outcomes within the AAPI communities.

It was the communities’ reaction to the mass shooting in Monterey Park during Lunar New Year 

celebrations that highlighted the need for them to examine behavioral health needs within the AAPI 

communities and to deliver relevant and culturally specific services. This led to many questions about 

the extent they were meeting the diversity of needs within the community, whether services were 

appropriate, and what the behavioral health and health outcomes were among the AAPI populations. 

In ongoing conversations with the GPO about the DIS, the CSC behavioral health director 

reflected, “We initially saw it as a needs assessment, but then started to see it as a huge 

benefit to the community because it is asking about an under-resourced population.”
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CSC reasoned that answering these types of questions could help them shed light on disparities, or gaps, 

to identify where services could be improved for the communities they serve. 

The Solution 

The curiosity around these questions led CSC staff to ask their GPO if they could revise their DIS and use 

grant funding to collect the missing data within the communities they serve. After explaining the context

to their GPO, their request to collect data by specific ethnic identities within the communities was 

approved. 

As the behavioral health director of CSC explained, “Data collection from a behavioral 

health service organization didn't always occur. Even though we had client data, I don't 

think comparisons were being made using that data. The DIS sparked intriguing

questions such as: ‘What kind of data should we be collecting? What data will be helpful 

for us as we move forward?’ We asked these questions because we do see the 

importance of having these different data that are being requested from us.”

In addition, the data collected within their own community would allow them to have data specific to 

the geographic boundaries of the area CSC serves, given that the available data sets did not exactly 

match the program’s service area boundaries.

The Results

The revised DIS identified specific populations that experience disparate behavioral health access, use 

and outcomes within the local AAPI communities (i.e., Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Japanese, Taiwanese, 

and Vietnamese). CSC also used the data to create estimates for their target reach to the different 

communities in each year of the grant. 

Examination of their data also motivated CSC to address the stigma of substance use when collecting 

data. For example, the national statistics on tobacco use among the AAPI population is low, and CSC 

knew from working with their clients that tobacco use is a substance widely used in the communities. 

However, due to social stigma, self-report of its use is low. This led to questions of how valid the national

data sets are regarding the use of tobacco within AAPI communities. 

Completing the DIS inspired CSC to seek out and use appropriate data to improve the responsiveness of 

their services. This involved the development of a data collection plan to yield valid and reliable data, 

implementation of a community wide data collection strategy, and the formation of an advisory board 

whose members includes peers, clients, and CSC staff. The advisory board has branched into a 

community project, and the board is proposing to conduct outreach to individuals in the community to 

increase their receptivity to mental health services. 

“The completion of the DIS sparked a lot of ideas on how we could provide and use the 

data to create more services. We wanted to have a better understanding of the 

community needs and where we could provide more focused services where there was a 

gap or need.” -- Behavioral Health Director, CSC
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Lessons From the Field

❖ It is essential to have data broken out by 

subpopulations to identify where disparities in access, 

use, and health outcomes exist.

❖ Although national and state data sets are informative 

as a starting place to understand disparities in 

communities, grantees may find they need to 

supplement existing data to have the information that 

is meaningful to the communities they serve. 

❖ Grantees can identify and address barriers, such as the 

social determinants of health and structural 

discrimination, to minimize disparities in access and 

use of services. Organizations can help end disparities

to achieve behavioral health equity.

❖ Both grantees and GPOs are striving to make progress 

toward behavioral health equity. The relationship 

between the GPO and grantee is very important in 

developing the DIS. It is within the meetings with GPOs 

that grantees can discuss their context, challenges, and 

ideas. They can collaborate to bring innovative ideas to 

life. 

❖ It doesn’t hurt to ask! SAMHSA appreciates grantees’

curiosity and pursuit of data to identify disparities, with the end goal being to bring about improved 

health equity through the work of their grantees. Grantees know their communities and can seek 

the information they need to answer questions about disparities. GPOs are interested in ideas 

generated by grantees.

Thank you to the Behavioral Health Director of the Chinatown Service Center and the 

SAMHSA Government Program Officer overseeing their grant funding for participating in 

interviews that were the basis for this case study.

“One of the things that we found 

helpful in the beginning is providing 

the GPO information not just about 

our organization, but also the 

geographic area that we're 

providing services to and what that 

looks like, whether it's the 

population or how it's being divided, 

or even going as far down as 

transportation. Depending on the 

geographic area that we serve, 

clients can experience the 

transportation systems differently. 

We find it helpful to provide the GPO

information in terms of our location, 

the population we serve, and the 

history.” -- Behavioral Health 

Director, CSC