This research is an anthology of a series of papers intended to describe the health state, healthcare experiences, healthcare preventive practice, healthcare barriers, and cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors of Asian Americans (AA) residing in Arizona (AZ). Asian Americans are known to be vulnerable populations and there is paucity of data on interventions to reduce CVD risk factors. An extensive literature review showed no available disaggregated health data of AA in AZ. The Neuman Systems Model guided this study. Chapter 1 elucidates the importance of conducting the research. It provides an overview of the literature, theory, and methodology of the study. Chapters 2 and 3 describe the results of a cross-sectional descriptive secondary analysis using the 2013, 2015, and 2017 Behavior Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) datasets. The outcomes demonstrate the disaggregated epidemiological phenomenon of AA. There were variations in their social determinants of health, healthcare barriers, healthcare preventive practice, CVD risk factors, and healthcare experiences based on perceived racism. It highlighted modifiable and non-modifiable predictors of hypertension (HTN) and diabetes. Chapter 4 is an integrative review of interventions implemented to reduce CVD risks tailored for Filipino Americans. Chapter 5 summarizes the research findings. The results may provide the community of practicing nurses, researchers, and clinicians the evidence to plan, prioritize, and implement comprehensive, theoretically guided, and culturally tailored community-led primary and secondary prevention programs to improve their health outcomes. The data may serve as a tool for stakeholders and policy makers to advocate for public health policies that will elevate population health of AA or communities of color in AZ to be in line with non-Hispanic White counterparts.

The objective of the present study was to investigate differences in traditional and non-traditional cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors between Asian and non-Hispanic White young adults. The burden of CVD varies by racial/ethnic group. Traditional risk factors that increase the likelihood of developing CVD include smoking, alcohol, physical inactivity, obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure. Suboptimal sleep is known to be a non-traditional risk factor for poor overall health, CVD risk factors, and CVD. The present study was an investigation of a cross-sectional, screening survey used for a larger community-based study on sleep and cardiovascular health. The unadjusted results examining differences in traditional CVD risk factors indicated that Asian participants were less likely to report alcohol use compared to non-Hispanic White participants. For non-traditional CVD risk factors, Asians were less likely to report experiencing sleep-related fatigue or malaise, attention impairment, daytime sleepiness, reduced motivation or energy, or concerns about their sleep compared to non-Hispanic White participants. Multivariate-analyses were conducted adjusting for sex and age. The adjusted results indicated that the Asian participants were less likely to report alcohol consumption, regular engagement in exercise, engagement in hard intensity exercise, concerns with sleep quality, and sleep difficulty-related fatigue, attention impairment, daytime sleepiness, reduced motivation, and were more likely to be obese compared to non-Hispanic White participants. The results may help guide cardiovascular prevention education provided to these groups. The data indicate the need for further longitudinal research studies on non-traditional CVD risk factors like sleep by ethnicity/race.