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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
Zhihuan J Huang, PhD and Jill G. Joseph, MD, PhD. Center for health services and community research, Children's National Medical Center, 111 Michigan Av, NW, Washington, DC, DC 20010, 202 884-3613, Jhuang@cnmc.org
Background: Children from immigrant families are a large and growing segment of American society. Since 1990 the number of children in immigrant families has expanded almost seven times faster than the number in U.S.-born families. About one in every five children under age 15 in the US was reported to have at least one foreign-born parent in 1995.
Objective: To describe the physical health status, behavioral problems, insurance coverage, and health care utilization of immigrant children.
Design/Methods: The children's component of the 1999 National Survey of the American Family (NSAF) was analyzed for this purpose. Children with a family member born outside US were defined as children from immigrant families.
Results: In 1999 NSAF, there were 1,027 children (weighted to 2,810,397) under 18 years old from immigrant families. Compared to children from native-born families, they are more likely to report poor/fair physical health (11.4% vs.4.3%, p=0.001) but less likely to have behavior problems in a younger age group (2.3% vs. 6.5%,p=0.001 for 6-12 years old, and 8.0% vs. 7.6%, p=0.75 for 13-17 years old ). They were also less likely to have insurance coverage in last 12 month (59.1% vs.89.1%, p=0.001), or to have a usual source of care (74.3% vs. 93.7%, p=0.001). They tended to have neither doctor visits (44.8% vs. 23.4%, p=0.001) nor dental visits (40.4% vs. 20.2%, p=0.001) in the past 12 months when compared to children from native born families.
Conclusions: Children from immigrant families suffered worse physical health and use significantly less health care.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Access to Health Care, Immigrants
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.