2021 Full Booklet Report and Community Specific Findings
In this series, King County shares results from the Best Starts for Kids Health Survey (BSKHS) and café community discussion findings about BSKHS racism results for 10 communities: African American, Afro-Latina/x/o, Cambodian (Khmer), Ethiopian, First Peoples (American Indian/Alaska Native), Hispanic/Latina/x/o, Middle Eastern/North African, Pasifika (Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander), Somali, and Vietnamese communities. In the first blog post, we summarized key findings across ten BIPOC communities:
Families face racism to varying degrees in every facet of life—and it’s under-reported in the Best Starts for Kids Health Survey.
Families are commonly subjected to racism in public and professional settings.
Families from most communities agreed that acts of racism were common at their child's school.
Most communities described racist occurrences in the healthcare system.
Families find support through their cultural communities.
Oppressive systems and racism continue to create disparities in access to services, education, economic attainment, and life expectancies for communities of color. While this series focuses largely on interpersonal racism, institutional and systemic racism are the largest drivers in disparities and inequities, and systemic racism needs to be addressed to make meaningful improvements in disparities.
In this second blog post, we are sharing the full booklet report “Understanding Experiences of Racism for King County Families.” This booklet report contains summary findings about experiences of racism, along with a summary page for each of the 10 communities who reflected on racism BSK Health Survey data for their racial/ethnic community. You can find the complete report booklet here. We have also posted community-specific findings on individual pages:
Afro-Latina/x/o - view translated Spanish version here
Cambodian (Khmer) - view translated Khmer version here
Hispanic/Latina/x/o - view translated Spanish version here
Middle Eastern/North African - view translated Dari version here
Vietnamese - view translated Vietnamese version here
We are sharing these products with families, community partners, and King County policy makers and program staff to inform ongoing anti-racism work in King County and Best Starts for Kids. This format was developed in partnership with the Community Café Collaborative and families. In early 2022, we will be sharing community-specific pages in Amharic, Dari, Khmer, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Somali.
Opportunity for other BIPOC communities to share experiences of racism
The 10 communities reflected in this series heard about the café discussions from the Community Café Collaborative or through their work with King County and were the first to express interest in hosting café discussions. There are many other communities who face racism whose experiences are not represented in this series.
We would love to hear from community partners who are interested in interpreting and sharing racism findings for other BIPOC communities such as: Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, parents in multiracial households, and LGBTQ BIPOC communities.
Please reach out to us at bsk.data@kingcounty.gov to discuss this opportunity further.
Thank you
We’d like to acknowledge and thank the many people who contributed to this project:
The families who shared their personal experiences in the survey and café discussions.
The Community Café Collaborative who led the cafés with families, including Sunny Giron, Amanda Rambayon (Little Shell Tribe/Turtle Mountain Chippewa), and Shereese Rhodes for their leadership on this project.
Public Health-Seattle & King County’s Assessment, Policy Development & Evaluation Unit staff for their role in collecting, analyzing, and reporting results, particularly Kristin Moore, Susan Hernandez, Eva Wong, Kim Tippens, Mohit Nair, Jay Marshall, Vanessa Quince, Sara Jaye Sanford, Anne McNair, Nadine Chan, and Marguerite Ro.
Graphic design and illustrations by Elsa Ferguson of What Else Designs LLC.