Numbering close to one million, about one third of Southeast Asian Americans in the United States live in California. SEARAC partners closely with 25 community-based organizations across the state to deepen local and statewide advocacy efforts to fight for racial and health equity, including access to affordable health care, culturally and linguistically appropriate mental health care for all Southeast Asian American generations, disaggregated data, education equity, gender justice, and immigrant rights.

SEARAC’s California office convenes the Asian American and Pacific Islander Boys and Men of Color Coalition Helping to Achieve Racial and Gender Equity (AAPI BMOC CHARGE), a multi-ethnic coalition of AAPI-serving community-based organizations throughout California, with a particular focus on dismantling the school-to-prison-to-deportation pipeline. This coalition leads the charge to break down data to uncover critical health and education disparities across Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities.

Key resources

Health

• Southeast Asian Americans Speak Out to Protect Affordable Health Care Webinar on February 21
  SEARAC presents the key findings and policy recommendations from our Protect Our Health Care comment card campaign. Find out what our Southeast Asian American communities are saying when their health care is threatened.

• Southeast Asian Americans Speak Out to Protect the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid Expansion
  Report based on more than 350 comments collected by Southeast Asian Americans across the country, including many from California, about why they support the ACA and Medicaid expansion.

• Covering All of California: Voices from Southeast Asian American Communities from the First Year of Covered California 
  A brief overview of the major challenges and recommendations for outreach and enrollment of our communities into health care.

AAPI Boys and Men of Color Coalition Helping to Achieve Racial and Gender Equity (CHARGE)

• California Asian American & Pacific Islander Youth Report Executive Summary
  Executive summary of a report based on more than 800 survey responses from largely Southeast Asian American and Pacific Islander youth from across the state of California on concerns ranging from poverty to unsafe neighborhoods to school climate.

Current campaigns

The Behavioral Health Equity Collaborative, led by the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network, was established in 2016 as a dedicated, coordinated collaborative of behavioral health equity advocates to engage in policy analysis and development, publicize and highlight advocacy opportunities with broader networks, and advance a vision of successful, inclusive, and consumer-oriented behavioral health integration.

SEARAC contributes to the Having Our Say Coalition, which is convened and facilitated by the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network, a multicultural statewide advocacy organization. Having Our Say works to ensure that communities of color have a voice in the debate over access to quality health care for all Californians. The statewide coalition has convened over 30 organizations to engage in policy analysis, legislative visits, and pass legislation to further health equity for Californians.

SEARAC is an active member of the College for All Coalition, a multiracial, statewide, and community-led coalition of more than 60 organizations that seeks to promote social justice in public higher education. Focusing on low-income youth, English learners, and foster youth of all backgrounds, the coalition is dedicated to supporting K-12 public school students in preparing for and graduating from California’s public universities.

Our California team is also engaged in the One California Coalition, an alliance of immigrant rights organizations that advocates for and monitors a state-funded program that supports free education and citizenship services for immigrants and provides legal representation for immigrants in deportation proceedings. The One California Coalition is convened and facilitated by the California Immigrant Policy Center.