TongRo Images Inc/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders may be at increased risk of a number of health hazards, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics said Wednesday.

That group was analyzed as a single category with Asians by the CDC until 1997, and in 2014, the agency put out its first survey focused solely on the health of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders.

That survey, compared with data from the 2014 annual National Health Interview Survey, found that NHPI adults are more likely to be in fair or poor health than the group the CDC named “single-race Asian adults.” NHPI individuals were also more likely to have serious psychological distress, cancer, coronary heart disease, diabetes, lower back pain, arthritis, migraines and asthma.

Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders represent about 0.4 percent of the total United States population.

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