four ideas.
one shared case.
Understand America. Make better decisions. Measure change. Ensure accountability.
Organizations across the country use race and ethnicity information in different ways. Researchers use it to understand health outcomes. Businesses use it to understand markets, employees and consumers. Advocates use it to understand barriers and solutions. Policymakers use it to make critical decisions.
When we communicate from the same foundation, our voices add up to a stronger, clearer case for America.
01 - understand america.
In the 2010 and 2020 Censuses, nearly 44% of Latinos selected “Some Other Race” or skipped the race question altogether—a sign that millions didn’t see themselves reflected in the available racial categories. In 2020, “Some Other Race” became the country's second-largest reported racial category.
-The Leadership Conference Education Fund, HHS Data Council Presentation (August 2024); Statistical Policy Directive 15: Revised Race and Ethnicity Data Collection Standards (June 2026).
To understand our country, we have to understand the people who live here. America is large and constantly changing. Race and ethnicity are part of that story.
Accurate information about race and ethnicity helps us understand who lives in our communities and how people differ. It gives a clearer picture of how society is functioning from health and education to employment, economic opportunity, housing, and more.
Broad averages can be useful. But they can also hide meaningful differences within and between populations. More specific information helps us see what an average cannot.
If we don't collect this information, those differences don't disappear. We simply lose our ability to see and understand them.
Collecting information doesn't create differences. It gives us a way to understand whether they exist.
SAY IT: Accurate information about race and ethnicity helps us understand America as it actually is. It helps us see who lives in our communities, understand people's experiences, and recognize differences that broad averages can sometimes hide.
MAKE IT SIMPLE: You can't understand America without understanding the people who live here.
Overall statistics show lower cervical cancer rates among Asian American women than non-Hispanic White women. But looking closer reveals higher rates among Vietnamese and Cambodian women and lower rates among Chinese and Asian Indian women. The average obscures populations experiencing very different health outcomes.
-The Leadership Conference Education Fund, HHS Data Council Presentation (August 2024), citing Institute of Medicine, Race, Ethnicity and Language Data: Standardization for Health Care Quality Improvement.
Race and ethnicity aren't the only things we need to know about people and communities. We collect information about age, jobs, income, housing, education, health, geography, and countless other characteristics because each can help us understand something different.
Race and ethnicity can also reveal important patterns.
They can help us understand when people experience different outcomes, where barriers exist, how communities are changing, and whether broad categories are obscuring the experiences of particular populations.
Collecting information doesn't create differences. It gives us a way to understand whether they exist.
USE THIS MESSAGE WHEN: You need to explain why race and ethnicity should be measured at all, why specificity matters, or what can be lost when populations disappear inside broad averages.
When Orange County, CA reported a 100% COVID-19 vaccination rate among Pacific Islanders, community organizations knew the numbers weren’t matching what they were seeing. Their push for more information helped change the county's response: officials prioritized vaccinations for 50 Pacific Islander faith leaders, expanded vaccinations into trusted faith-based sites, and worked with community partners to translate health materials into five languages.
-Lee et al., Invisibility Is Killing Us: Data Aggregation and Its Health Impact on Pacific Islanders and Asian Americans in California, University of California, Irvine (August 2024).
02 - make better decisions.
Good information helps us make decisions based on facts, not assumptions. Information becomes valuable when we can use it.
Every day, governments, businesses, hospitals, schools, researchers, nonprofits, and other institutions make decisions that impact Americans.
Should a hospital expand a certain service? Is a workforce program reaching those workers who need it? Are new technologies working right for the people using them? Has an investment actually improved conditions? Where are barriers preventing people from participating or succeeding?
Accurate information about race and ethnicity can help answer questions like these.
The choice isn't between making decisions with information and making no decisions at all. Decisions will still be made. The question is whether they're based on facts or assumptions.
SAY IT: Good decisions start with an accurate understanding of what's happening. Race and ethnicity information can help identify problems, understand needs, develop solutions, and determine whether those solutions are actually working.
MAKE IT SIMPLE: If you can't see what's happening, it's harder to respond effectively. OR Facts are a better foundation for decisions than assumptions.
MAKE IT SIMPLE: Instead of saying, “We need high-quality disaggregated demographic data.” Start with the decision: “If a hospital wants to know whether patients are experiencing different health outcomes, it needs information that allows it to see those differences.”
Suicide was the leading cause of death among Pacific Islander and Asian American youth ages 10–19 and the second-leading cause among ages 20–34 in data cited by California advocates. Yet a 2023 California youth-suicide prevention funding opportunity didn’t include Pacific Islander and Asian American communities among its priority populations.
-Lee et al., Invisibility Is Killing Us: Data Aggregation and Its Health Impact on Pacific Islanders and Asian Americans in California, University of California, Irvine (August 2024).
The information is supporting the outcome—not the other way around. Don’t make “data” the protagonist instead of the decisions and outcomes that information makes possible.
USE THIS MESSAGE WHEN: You're speaking to policymakers, businesses, healthcare organizations, researchers, technology leaders, funders, or anyone focused on problem-solving and results.
03 - measure change.
CHANGE THE FRAME: Conversations about race and ethnicity information often focus on disparities: Where are outcomes unequal? Who is being left behind? Where do barriers remain?
While important questions, they aren't the only questions this information allows us to answer. We can also ask:
Where have gaps narrowed?
Where are more people succeeding than a decade ago?
Which investments produced results?
Which policies worked?
What can we learn from communities where conditions improved?
You can’t measure progress if you stop measuring. Race and ethnicity information doesn’t only help us identify where problems exist. It helps us see when things are getting better.
Over time, accurate and consistent information allows us to understand whether barriers are coming down, opportunities are expanding, health outcomes are improving, and policies, programs, and investments are producing the results they promised.
Without a way to compare where we are with where we've been, it becomes much harder to distinguish real progress from good intentions.
And when something is working, information helps us identify that success, learn from it, and build on it.
SAY IT: We collect information not only to understand where challenges remain, but to know when we're making progress. Accurate race and ethnicity information helps us see whether conditions are improving, opportunities are expanding, and our efforts are actually working.
MAKE IT SIMPLE: If we want to celebrate progress, we have to be able to measure it.
USE THIS MESSAGE WHEN: You're talking to audiences focused on results, effectiveness, return on investment, accountability, policy evaluation, or America's progress over time.
04 - Ensure accountability.
New York's annual public-school enrollment reports make Pre-K enrollment information available by characteristics including race and ethnicity, economic disadvantage, English-language learner status, gender, and disability status, down to individual districts and schools. By contrast, publicly available preschool special-education information lacks comparable detail about how children are being served.
-The Children's Agenda / Citizens' Committee for Children of New York / Schuyler Center, Counting All Kids: Data Disaggregation in New York's Pre-Kindergarten and Preschool Special Education System (April 2024).
In 2026 focus groups with conservative and conservative-leaning independent audiences, participants repeatedly raised concerns about why information was being collected, who would use it, and how it would be protected. When presented with an argument that government collection should have a clear public purpose, strong protections, and transparency about use, participants rated it an average 2.38 on a three-point convincing scale.
-Lake Research Partners and Pantheon Insights, 3FPD Focus Groups Research Report (June 25, 2026).
Public information should serve the public. Good information matters. So does how we collect, protect, use, and share it.
Supporting accurate race and ethnicity information doesn't mean believing that every piece of information should be collected or that personal information should be available to anyone who wants it. Quite the opposite.
People should be able to understand what information is being collected, why it is needed, how it will be protected, and what it will be used to accomplish.
Good stewardship helps make good information possible.
SAY IT: Information should be collected for a clear purpose, protected responsibly, used transparently, and made appropriately accessible. People deserve to understand why information is being collected and how it serves the public.
MAKE IT SIMPLE: Good information requires good stewardship.
FOUR STANDARDS FOR GOOD STEWARDSHIP
Clear purpose: Collect information for a reason. Be able to explain what information is needed, why it is needed, and what question it can help answer.
Responsible protection: Protect people's personal information. Useful public information and personally identifiable information are not the same thing. Appropriate safeguards should protect people's privacy while allowing information to serve legitimate public purposes.
Transparency: Make the process understandable. People should be able to know who collected information, how it was collected, and how it is being used.
Public access: Make public information work for the public.
Appropriate information collected for public purposes should be accessible enough for researchers, communities, organizations, and others to understand what's happening, evaluate outcomes, and hold institutions accountable.
We shouldn't ask people to support race and ethnicity information by telling them simply to trust the institutions collecting it. We should be able to explain the purpose and the safeguards.
That is especially important for audiences that may be skeptical of government collection. Research with conservative and conservative-leaning independent audiences found that transparency was a particularly strong bridge: participants wanted to know who collected information, how it was collected, what it was being used for, and how it would be protected.
USE THIS MESSAGE WHEN: You're speaking with audiences concerned about privacy, government effectiveness, transparency, public access, responsible use, or institutional trust.