The "2004 Community Health Report for Houston's Alief/Park Place Super Neighborhoods" is based on a two-year assessment of the health and well being of Houston's Vietnamese refugee communities that predominantly reside in the Alief and Park Place neighborhoods of Houston. It is the first-ever comprehensive health report for Houston's Vietnamese Community.

Since 1975, the U.S. has received more than 940,000 Vietnamese refugees, 14 percent of whom have settled in Texas. According to the 2000 Census, the number of Vietnamese in Houston is increasing faster than any other segment of the population at 75.7 percent, exceeding even the Hispanic growth rate of 73.5 percent. After reviewing the data on population density, the Asian-American Health Advisory Group of St. Luke's Episcopal Health Charities requested a focus on Houston's Vietnamese, a population for which no comprehensive health assessment had ever been compiled.

According to the report, Houston's Vietnamese are less likely to have health insurance, more likely to treat illness through self-care, have more ER visits and longer hospitalizations, will experience liver cancer and cervical cancer at rates significantly higher than Caucasian-Americans, are likely to experience intergenerational conflict and are more likely to be linguistically isolated.

The qualitative and quantitative study performed by the Episcopal Health Charities was initiated in Alief and extended to Park Place at the request of Khoa Tran, a representative of Houston's seven Vietnamese "villages" in the Park Place neighborhood where more than 4,000 Vietnamese reside in a governance structure that parallels that of villages of Vietnam.

The 2004 Community Health Report for Houston's Vietnamese population includes recommendations for:

• developing culturally appropriate and accessible health and health education services,
• working with local organizations to provide ESL classes
• establishing opportunities for youth development, and
• providing mental health services to residents of both communities.

Partnering with Shalom Mobile Health Ministries, St. Luke's Episcopal Health Charities will begin delivering mobile health services and health education to Park Place's Vietnamese villages twice a month, starting the day the report will be issued to the public.

Research for this Community Health Report was guided by a community-based collaborative comprised of health professionals, non-profit organizations such as Park Place Library and various community members. St. Luke's Episcopal Health Charities also plans to incorporate results of a survey of 800 participants launched in July by the Center for Research on Minority Health at UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center on the health issues of Vietnamese and Chinese communities when the survey is completed.

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