The Asian American Alliance (AAA) is hosting an ‘Asian American Health Disparities Panel’ on February 12th, 2010 at 7:30pm in 569 Lerner, and would like to ask for your participation in this event. A while back during one of our heated debates over the definition of mental illness in our community, we stumbled across several statistics that stunned us. Young Asian Americans have the highest suicide rates in the country. In 2002, over 50% of the Hepatitis B patients were Asian or Asian American. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders account for over 22% of all tuberculosis cases reported in the United States. And Asian American women were the most likely amongst women of color to opt out of a Pap smear.

So we ask, why? What is it that our healthcare systems overlook? What do these statistics tell us? And why is health disparity a little known bullet on the Asian American agenda?

Asian Americans will grow to comprise over 5% of the American population in the upcoming years and yet the Asian American voice is one of the most neglected minority voices in the United States. Health disparities are a topic households try to avoid, and the lack of sufficient national research studies done to support the present Asian American population is a cause for concern. Panelists will include Dr. Dennis Kuo M.D, Rebecca Sze FNP, MSN, MPA, Alexandra Belcher MPH Candidate, Sel J Hwahng, Ph.D, Ming-Der Chang, Ph.D and Dr. Shobha Krishnan M.D.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email us at aaa@columbia.edu.

We look forward to see you there.

Facebook Event

Welcome back, everyone!

And a special welcome back to Annie, our event adviser who has been in Hong Kong the last semester, and everyone in our general body who is returning back to Columbia this semester.

We are meeting today on the first day of the semester and we are getting geared up to plan some awesome events. We are focusing on health issues this semester, with a forum on Asian-American health.  And of course, don’t forget that this year is our fifteenth anniversary… stay tuned!

Have a wonderful second first day, and see you at our next event.

ZOMG, cultureSHOCK IS TOMORROW!!!111!!!

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21ST, 7PM, ROONE ARLEDGE, IT’S GOING TO BE AN EXPERIENCE YOU’LL NEVER FORGET.

Buy tickets at TIC (general admission - $10) or at Lerner Ramps (VIP - $15 - less than 30 left)!!!

cultureSHOCK 2009: Lost & Found

We are SO pleased to announce the newest members of our board!

Our Webmaster is Yufei Liu, SEAS ‘12.

Our new OCMs are:
Angel Wong
Cindy Gao
Emily Chen
IhnSeon Park
Lucy Wang
Yalan Wu

Check out their bios here!

We, the executive board, are very excited and happy to start working with everyone. And we, the whole board, can’t wait to start working with our general body. It’s gonna be AAAwesome.

Yay AAA 09-10!

P.S. We are definitely hitting the ground running - we are particularly inspired by this article and another article on Angry Asian Man. Columbia University was named Best University or College for AAPI students - and AAA got a special place in the article.

Personally, I love the shout-outs to Aretha, one of our chairs last year, and to Crossroads: AAA’s Asian American leadership conference for high school students. But there is much more mentioned in the article.

But regardless, we’re really pumped up for this year - and we are glad to have such passionate, dedicated and AAAmazing board members collaborating on the board this year!

School is staring up again, which means that AAA is looking for new additions to its board! We are currently accepting applications for the Organizational Committee Members Board.

What is an OCM, you may ask? Go here for an explanation.

Download the application!

Please don’t forget to join us at our General Body Meeting on Sunday, September 13. Check out the details on Facebook.

Incentives: Free food, and viewings of awesome videos.

Leave us a comment if you have any questions, concerns, comments, or simply AAA love.

We are pleased to announce the two newest members of the AAA Board:
Tiffany Chen as our new Social Chair
and
Vivian Lu as our new Historian.
We look forward to working with both Tiffany and Vivian in the upcoming semesters.

Yay!

AAA is pleased to announce the board for the 2009-2010 academic year:

Chair: Kevin Zhai - SEAS ‘12
CC/SEAS/GS Vice Chair: Alysha Chan - SEAS ‘10
Barnard Vice Chair: Ai-Lin Shao - BC ‘11
Secretary: Belle Yan - CC ‘12
Treasurer: Steven Wong - SEAS ‘12
Political Committee Chair: Laura Ly - CC’12
Service Committee Chair: Sahil Shah - SEAS ‘12
Event Adviser: Annie Tan - CC ‘11

We will be interviewing for the historian, social chair, and webmaster positions and we will announce those positions ASAP.

Welcome to the new 2008-2009 school year. Hope everyone’s had a fantastic summer and is well rested. For those who are interested in applying for an OCM position, applications are up at http://aaacolumbia.org/wiki/OCM_Application. The deadline to get them in is Thursday, September 11 at 6, so you better start cranking them out!

After a 2 hour election deliberation marked by tears and laughter, I would like to congratulate the new AAA board of 2008-2009:

Chair - Aretha Choi (BC 2010)

CC/SEAS Vice Chair - Shilpa Vadodaria (SEAS 2010)

BC Vice Chair - Katie Wang (BC 2010)

Secretary - Daniel Nisball (SEAS 2009)

Treasurer - Jeremy Tapp (CC 2011)

Political Chair - Jia Ahmad (CC 2011)

Community Chairs - Lena Fan (CC 2010) & Mei Li Zhou (BC 2011)

Social Chair - Patrick Chang (SEAS 2011)

Publicity Chair - Corinne Fukayama (SEAS 2010)

Historians - Eddie Kang (CC 2011) & Lizzie Shen (CC 2011)

USCC Representative - Evan Omi (CC 2011)

You all have my love. Stay classy.

- Calvin, former Chair