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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Hyeouk Chris Hahm, PhD¹, Rose Barreto, MSW², and Sunny Hyuck-Sun Shin, PhD¹. (1) School of Social Work, Boston univeristy, 264 Bay State Road, Boston, MA 02215, 617-353-3925, hahm@bu.edu, (2) School of Social Welfare, University of California, Berkeley, 120 Haviland Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720

Context: In 2000, roughly one in five children and adolescents in the U.S. reported that they spoke a language other than English at home. Although the influx of new and diverse immigrants has dramatically changed patterns of language use, and health care providers are increasingly likely to encounter these children and adolescents in their practice, little is known about the association between language use and health outcomes. The objective was to better understand the unique role that language use at home plays in ethnic minority adolescents' health status, medical insurance status, and access to health care.

Methods: Using the 2001 California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), this study compared health status, medical insurance, and having a usual source of care for 2,230 ethnic minority adolescents (Asian Americans, Latino Americans, American Indians, and multi-ethnic) in three language subgroups: (1) English only at home (n=698), (2) English and other language (n=1,312), and (3) Exclusively other language (n=220). Chi-square and logistic regression analyses examined the association between language use and the various health factors.

Results: Among adolescents who spoke other language-only at home, 26% reported fair or poor health and 34% did not have medical insurance, compared to 10% and 5% respectively among those who spoke English-only at home (p-values < .001). In multivariate analyses, compared to those speaking English-only at home, adolescents who exclusively used another language at home had 2.36 greater odds (p=.012) of reporting fair or poor health and 4.60 greater odds (p<.001) of not having medical insurance after adjusting for age, gender, ethnicity, parental marital status, poverty, and citizenship status. Among young adolescents aged 12-14, those who did not speak English at home were 3.27 times more likely (p=.029) to have no usual care compared to those who did speak English-only at home.

Conclusions: This study illustrates substantial disparities in health status and insurance among California minority adolescents based on their language use at home. The interaction of age and language use demonstrated that for adolescents who are old enough, language use at home may not be a critical factor for having a usual source of care because they are more independent and therefore less likely to rely on their parents to access health care than younger adolescents. Interventions to improve these health disparities will need to consider the importance of language use at home in the context of the developmental stage of the adolescents.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the extent of health needs of ethnic minority adolescents.
• Articulate the relationship between language use at home and health status, medical insurance status, and access to usual health care among ethnic minority adolescents.
• Discuss the public health implications in addressing the role of language use in ethnic minority adolescents’ health and health care.

Keywords: Access to Health Care, Adolescent Health

Related Web page: www.chis.ucla.edu/

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No