Immigrant Health is Public Health
In Summer 2019, our research team [Darlene Xiomara Rodriguez, Jessica Hill, and Paul N. McDaniel] completed a scoping review of published articles and practitioner-focused grey literature to learn more about the intersections between immigration and health in the United States. Our research questions were: 1) What does the literature tell us about immigration and health equity in the US? and 2) What does the literature tell us about the role of immigration status as a social determinant of health? Mental health and wellbeing among immigrant communities emerged as key themes.
While we conducted the majority of this review before Covid-19 was first reported in the US, the ongoing pandemic has emphasized systemic and interrelated racial, ethnic, and economic inequalities in the US health care system and society more broadly. Our review identified several themes related to promoting health and wellbeing among immigrants and their communities, together with barriers to accessing services that should inform public health responses to Covid-19.
Immigration can be considered a social determinant of health for a variety of reasons. From a macro level, it is the structural racism and discrimination that result in well-documented health inequities. On a micro level, it is how a person’s immigration status influences their ability and eligibility to obtain health benefits and services. At the mezzo level, it is how these two ends of the spectrum come together as we examine the relationship between one’s own immigration status, mixed-status households, and ethnic enclaves that shape and reshape the living and working conditions for all community members. Factors like country of origin, destination country, race/ethnicity, age, socioeconomic status, and immigration status influence health outcomes both before and after migration and also impact the re-settlement process. Therefore, it is imperative for established residents and new Americans to recognize that anti-immigrant stigma exacerbates the racial/ethnic health disparities in society at the local, regional, state, and national level.
Our review findings fall into four themes related to mental health and wellbeing in immigrant communities…Continue reading our full article here on Public Health Post from Boston University School of Public Health.
Originally published at https://www.publichealthpost.org on October 20, 2020.
