Enhancing the Human Wellbeing Vital Signs through Inclusive Engagement: A Report for the Asia Pacific Cultural Center

This report outlines the processes and results from a collaborative multi-year (2021-2023) project focused on inclusively engaging Puget Sound residents in order to enhance the Human Wellbeing (HWB) Vital Signs (VS). The HWB VS are a series of social indicators used to monitor the health and recovery of Puget Sound and are coordinated by the Puget Sound Partnership, a Washington state agency. The HWB VS are primarily monitored by Oregon State University's Human Dimensions Lab. This project focused on enhancing inclusive engagement among Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community members in the Puget Sound region, a community underrepresented within current human wellbeing monitoring efforts. This project included establishing new sustainable community partnerships, co-creating knowledge with community partners, and capturing lessons learned to further this community-based monitoring work for the Puget Sound Partnership, and its ecosystem recovery network. A community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach was conducted to co-develop and co-implement this project with the Asia Pacific Cultural Center (APCC) located in Tacoma, WA. This approach included the co-creation of facilitated dialogues (community workshops) (n=166) and implementation of an optional Human Wellbeing Vital Signs Survey (n=76).

Table 1. Human Wellbeing Vital Signs

Table 2. Community Dimensions of Health

Overall, the facilitated dialogues demonstrated that the Human Wellbeing Vital Signs were relevant and resonated among participating AAPI community members (Table 1). This was reflected in the workshop responses. For example, Air Quality, Water Quality (includes Drinking, Fresh, and Marine), Local Foods, Outdoor Activity, Sense of Place, and Cultural Wellbeing were common themes among participating AAPI community members' responses. New Community Dimensions of human health² also emerged during the workshops (Table 2). For example, Physical Health, Plants and Trees, Place and Landscape, Fish and Wildlife, and Environmental Condition (general) were common themes among participating AAPI residents' responses. Many of these new Community Dimensions largely demonstrated cultural, aesthetic, existence, inherent, and recreational values associated with nature's contributions to human health (Chan and others 2012; Belaire and others 2015; Dickinson and Hobbs 2017; Jones and others 2019; Jiang and Marggraf 2022). Responses also demonstrated the role of place and linkages among places, landscapes or landscape features, and human health (Bieling and others 2014; Jones and others 2019).

Table 3. Human Wellbeing Survey Results Summary

Table 4. Regional & Latinx Human Wellbeing Vital Signs Survey Results

Regional & Latinx Human Wellbeing Survey Results (2018-2022)⁴

Overall, the AAPI survey respondents demonstrated similar patterns of human wellbeing as it relates to the health of Puget Sound when compared to findings from other Human Wellbeing Vital Signs Surveys (Tables 3-4). Participating AAPI community members had similar average responses to most VS questions. For example, AAPI respondents had similar average responses to Local Foods (1.41),  Cultural Wellbeing (3.66), and Sense of Place (5.19). Community members' Cultural Wellbeing was frequently discussed during the facilitated dialogues, notably outdoor community, spiritual/church, and family activities. While largely similar, some stark differences did emerge compared to the other survey findings. For example, AAPI respondents had higher average responses for Good Governance (5.19) and lower average responses to Sound Stewardship (2.95). For example, governance was not a frequently mentioned topic or theme, illustrating (by omission) that governance or lack thereof was not a major environmental topic of concern. All detailed findings and corresponding data visualizations are outlined in the following sections.

Notes:

1 The Human Wellbeing Vital Signs include Drinking Water and the biophysical Vital Signs include Freshwater and Marine Water Quality; however, many community members mentioned "water" in various forms and iterations, so for the purpose of this project these three Vital Signs were merged into one (Water Quality).

2 Human health was determined to be the primary term used during the workshops (rather than wellbeing). This was an intentional choice made during the workshop co-creation process and was determined to be more relevant to the participating AAPI community members.

3 Note that translations of "work" in natural environments may have varied contributing to alternative interpretations of the question, notably among Korean speaking community members.

4 All data stems from the 2018, 2020, Latinx 2021, and 2022 Human Wellbeing Surveys (Fleming and others 2018; Fleming and others 2021; Justiniano 2021; Harrington and others 2023).