How Asian American health advocates help immigrants overcome fears and access healthcare: A model program for immigrants' rights

Many immigrants avoid seeking healthcare because they want to avoid medical debt, and have received confusing or misleading information about their rights to healthcare. Immigrants perceive risks to their sponsors, to immigration status, and to the ability to reunite with family members. Throughout the spring of 2006, millions of immigrants and their allies took to the streets in support of comprehensive immigration reform. The demonstrations stimulated debate about immigration, and stirred powerful anti-immigrant sentiment that could even be felt in the front lines of hospitals throughout New York. The New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) responded to cases of local hospitals threatening to deport patients and dumping patients. In response to these problems and restrictive policies such as new citizenship documentation in federal Medicaid, the NYIC and its network of community-based immigrant health advocates developed a multi-lingual “know-your-rights” campaign to reassured immigrant New Yorkers about the safety of using health care. The NYIC and its partners reached immigrants through community education, training, and media outreach in ethnic and mainstream print, television, radio, and web-based sources aimed at encouraging immigrants to seek preventive and primary care. This presentation will focus on the collaborative approach to building community-based health advocacy and legal services capacity, and offer examples of successful strategies for helping immigrants overcome their fears and access health care, including the use of ethnic media. Case studies will be given from two Asian American community based organizations.