No, it’s mentioned because “Asian and Pacific Islander” is a specific, separate category for government’s data collection purposes. It was created as a result of Pacific Islander lobby. You can look up all of this.
This paper breaks out Asian and Pacific Islander as separate ethnic groups in their data. You can see it in this summary and in the slightly more detailed data if you click through to the paper on JAMA.
(Actually they break out “Non-Hispanic Asian” and “Non-Hispanic Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander”. The need to call out “non-Hispanic” on every ethnicity seems weird.)