Richard Calvin Chang, JD, is the director and a co-founding member of the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) Data Policy Lab at the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research (CHPR). His current work focuses on raising awareness of COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on NHPIs and ensuring the community is accurately represented with policymakers and stakeholders. His duties include developing and maintaining data dashboards highlighting NHPI data, developing data reports for national and local NHPI partners, and assisting with the development of a national policy platform for NHPIs.
Prior to joining UCLA CHPR, Chang worked as an attorney and policy director for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) nonprofits and served as president of the Pacific Islander Health Partnership. He previously managed health policy and data equity campaigns that led to the passage of a smoke-free outdoor area ordinance in the city of Carson and mandating further disaggregation of Asian and Pacific Islander groups by the California Department of Public Health. He has also worked with the California Department of Justice to ensure NHPI data is disaggregated under the Racial and Identity Profiling Act. Chang was also the project manager and co-author of the first demographic profiles of NHPIs in the U.S. and California and the Policy Platform Blueprint for NHPIs in the United States.
Chang received a BA in political science from the University of California, San Diego, a JD from Seton Hall University School of Law, and an MS in computational analysis and public policy at the University of Chicago.
The NHPI Data Policy Lab, even though our focus is mostly on data, we really do see data as one of the foundational pieces for making sure that our communities are represented accurately when these decisions are made. And making sure that not only is our community counted within its disaggregated, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander category, but that our individual Islander communities are also represented as well, because we know that not all of our islander communities share the same socioeconomic status across many measures.
[Later in the podcast]
And so arming ourselves with both sides — the data and the stories — I think is extremely helpful. And as far as the stories, I think it's worth emphasizing to our community and legislators that it may not be always visibly apparent for those outside of our community what these programs can mean for us.