Health Service Utilization among Different Ethnicities of New Immigrants

Background- Based on the Andersen's behavioral model, this study (1) examines the effects of enabling, predisposing, and needs factors on immigrants' health behavior in a sample of different races, and (2) tests the effect of assets as a new enabling factor on immigrants' health behavior.

Method- Data for this study come from the National Immigrant Survey (NIS) 2003 cohort. NIS data for 8,573 adults (18-65) were analyzed using logistic regression and multiple imputation techniques. The regression analysis was composed of a full model and seven ethnic sub-models.

Results – In the full model, education (+), health insurance (+), English proficiency (+), and self-rated health (-) were statistically significant with the physician visits. On the other hand, age (+), gender (+), education (+), employment status (+), health insurance (+), income (+), and home ownership (+) had significant associations with the dentist visits. These results show that asset holding of immigrants can play a role as an enabling factor to make their health service use possible. According to the results of regression analyses on sub-models, all ethnicities, except Indian, Eastern European, and Oceanian, had positive or negative relationships between asset-holding and physician or dentist visits. Also, this study found various patterns of immigrant health service utilization by ethnicity.

Conclusion – The first achievement of this study is to show that immigrants' health service use can be affected by ethnic differences. Another achievement is to prove that immigrants' asset-holding can be a useful factor to promote their health behavior.