Advocates and students urge passage of Intro 11-34 to disaggregate city demographic data

A broad coalition of community groups, service providers and student advocates urged the City Council to pass Intro 11-34, legislation to expand how city agencies collect and report race and ethnicity data. Council members and witnesses said more granular data is necessary to identify disparities and target services that are currently hidden when many ethnic groups are aggregated into broad categories such as “Asian.”

Council members framed the bill on the record when introducing a package of measures: “Intro 11-34, sponsored by council member Krishnan, will require city agencies that collect demographic information to include additional data on race and ethnicity,” the committee chair said as part of his opening remarks. The bill’s supporters argued detailed ethnicity data would improve public health responses, language access, school services and social‑service delivery.

Young people with the Asian American Student Advocacy Project testified that aggregated categories erase distinct needs. "Data aggregation causes the diverse struggles of each ethnic group to be often overlooked," junior Jason Lee of Bronx High School of Science told the committee, adding that disaggregated data would allow schools and city agencies to allocate resources by community need rather than assumptions. Student witnesses described personal examples — for instance, Burmese and other Southeast Asian students and families whose language and service needs are overlooked when all Asian groups are grouped together.

Nonprofit providers and advocacy organizations from across the city emphasized concrete consequences. Coalition for Asian American Children and Families (CACF) data policy coordinator Jimin Cha said Intro 11-34 would go beyond the “top 30” ancestry groups many agencies currently use and would require all agencies to disaggregate, improving visibility for groups such as Bangladeshi, Nepali, Burmese, Hmong and Indo‑Caribbean New Yorkers. CACF highlighted a city health example: while the overall diabetes prevalence among Asian and Pacific Islander New Yorkers was reported near the city average, disaggregated data showed higher diabetes rates among Indian New Yorkers (21 percent) versus lower rates among Chinese (9 percent) and Korean (7 percent) communities, a disparity that matters for targeted outreach and care.

Service providers offered programmatic examples: India Home, which serves South Asian and Indo‑Caribbean seniors, said South Asians face higher rates of Type 2 diabetes and may have substantial language and poverty needs that are invisible when data are aggregated. Homecrest Community Services explained that Chinese communities are internally diverse: Cantonese‑, Mandarin‑ and other dialect communities have different health and education needs that a single data checkbox will not capture.

Advocates argued the bill is particularly urgent given federal data challenges. Several witnesses said federal funding and Census efforts are under pressure, making local action necessary to ensure city services match the needs of communities that have been historically undercounted or misclassified. The Invisible No More coalition and member organizations urged the Council to pass the measure without delay and thanked Councilmember Shekhar Krishnan for sponsoring the legislation.

Council members noted the testimony and signaled support; advocates asked the committee to advance the bill and to ensure agencies have implementation guidance and to provide resources for agency data system changes. No formal committee vote was recorded at the hearing.

Sources: testimony on the record at the Council Committee on Governmental Operations hearing, including students from the Asian American Student Advocacy Project, CACF staff, India Home, Homecrest Community Services and other coalition members.