Explore the vast range of titles available.

Immigrant health research has often noted an “immigrant health paradox”, the observation that immigrants are “healthier” compared to their native-born peers of similar demographic and socioeconomic profile. This paradox disappears as immigrants stay longer in the host country. Multiple arguments, including migrant selectivity and cultural and behavioral factors have been proposed as reasons for the apparent paradox. Recently, the field has focused on immigrant legal status, especially its racialization. We review the literature on the immigrant health paradox, legal status, and racialized legal status to examine how this debate has taken a more structural approach. We find that immigrant health research has taken a needed intersectional approach, a productive development that examines how different markers of disadvantage work concurrently to shape immigrants’ health. This approach, which factors in immigration enforcement practices, aligns with explanations for poor health outcomes among other racialized groups, and promises a fruitful avenue for future research.

Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Fit to Be Citizens? demonstrates how both science and public health shaped the meaning of race in the early twentieth century. Through a careful examination of the experiences of Mexican, Japanese, and Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles, Natalia Molina illustrates the many ways local health officials used complexly constructed concerns about public health to demean, diminish, discipline, and ultimately define racial groups. She shows how the racialization of Mexican Americans was not simply a matter of legal exclusion or labor exploitation, but rather that scientific discourses and public health practices played a key role in assigning negative racial characteristics to the group. The book skillfully moves beyond the binary oppositions that usually structure works in ethnic studies by deploying comparative and relational approaches that reveal the racialization of Mexican Americans as intimately associated with the relative historical and social positions of Asian Americans, African Americans, and whites. Its rich archival grounding provides a valuable history of public health in Los Angeles, living conditions among Mexican immigrants, and the ways in which regional racial categories influence national laws and practices. Molina's compelling study advances our understanding of the complexity of racial politics, attesting that racism is not static and that different groups can occupy different places in the racial order at different times.

It can be argued that anti-immigrant policies, such as the 287(g) program, can have a direct impact on the health and well-being of the immigrant community in general, particularly undocumented immigrants in the United States. While there is yet to be a comprehensive and conclusive empirical assessment of this issue, what is known is that the immigrant community faces many stress factors and structural barriers that negatively impact health. We argue that it is urgent that public health responds to the unique experiences and challenges of the undocumented and wider immigrant community. In doing so, we propose three recommendations for addressing this issue: (1) Assess the causal relationship between anti-immigration policies and immigrant health, (2) Increase funding and access to health care services for immigrant communities in jurisdictions implementing anti-immigrant policies, and (3) For public health to engage in a conscious effort to service the undocumented immigrant community. Even though we focus specifically on the United States, our recommendations are applicable on a global scale since anti-immigration policies are prevalent across nations and are a pervasive human rights issue around the world.

Charting the experiences of internally or externally migrant communities, the volume examines social transformation through the dynamic relationship between movement, reproduction, and health. The chapters examine how healthcare experiences of migrants are not only embedded in their own unique health worldviews, but also influenced by the history, policy, and politics of the wider state systems. The research among migrant communities an understanding of how ideas of reproduction and \"cultures of health\" travel, how healing, birth and care practices become a result of movement, and how health-related perceptions and reproductive experiences can define migrant belonging and identity.

Migration and Health: Critical Perspectives offers a radical rethinking of the field by unsettling conventional ideas of mobility and borders to highlight the ways in which they produce health inequalities. Covering a wide range of topics, the text provides insight through a critical lens and proposes areas for intervention along with future research needs to address the health inequities that affect migrants. It illustrates how a critical perspective can deepen our understanding of the relationship between migration and health, which remains a defining global issue of our century. The text employs a critical approach to examine the structural conditions of inequality and larger historical and political processes, recognizing that exclusionary bordering practices increasingly occur away from physical points of entry. It posits the concept of migration as complex, tangled, and multi-directional and underscores how migrant vulnerability can shape the lives of people in broader communities. Furthermore, it acknowledges diverse and intersectional standpoints, as well as shifting spatial and temporal influences. Chapters include coverage of health in transit; health care access and utilization; clinical encounters; communicable disease; labor and occupational health; gender and sexuality; immigration enforcement, detention, deportation; and the effects of forced displacement on refugee and asylum seeker health. The text is useful for students and scholars of migration or health disparities seeking to understand how the two issues can be approached in a more holistic and critical way. It is further aimed at practitioners and policymakers who are interested in gaining familiarity with the structural conditions of inequality along with the larger historical and political processes that influence contemporary migration patterns.

Background Africans immigrants in the United States are the least-studied immigrant group, despite the research and policy efforts to address health disparities within immigrant communities. Although their healthcare experiences and needs are unique, they are often included in the “black” category, along with other phenotypically-similar groups. This process makes utilizing research data to make critical healthcare decisions specifically targeting African immigrants, difficult. The purpose of this Scoping Review was to examine extant information about African immigrant health in the U.S., in order to develop lines of inquiry using the identified knowledge-gaps. Methods Literature published in the English language between 1980 and 2016 were reviewed in five stages: (1) identification of the question and (b) relevant studies, (c) screening, (d) data extraction and synthesis, and (e) results. Databases used included EBSCO, ProQuest, PubMed, and Google Scholar (hand-search). The articles were reviewed according to title and abstract, and studies deemed relevant were reviewed as full-text articles. Data was extracted from the selected articles using the inductive approach, which was based on the comprehensive reading and interpretive analysis of the organically emerging themes. Finally, the results from the selected articles were presented in a narrative format. Results Culture, religion, and spirituality were identified as intertwined key contributors to the healthcare experiences of African immigrants. In addition, lack of culturally-competent healthcare, distrust, and complexity, of the U.S. health system, and the exorbitant cost of care, were identified as major healthcare access barriers. Conclusion Knowledge about African immigrant health in the U.S. is scarce, with available literature mainly focusing on databases, which make it difficult to identify African immigrants. To our knowledge, this is the first Scoping Review pertaining to the healthcare experiences and needs of African immigrants in the U.S.

This study sought to understand the perceptions of Ghanaian immigrants of the health status and health trajectory of their community. We conducted focus groups and interviews with 63 primarily Ghanaian immigrants living in New York City. Nearly all participants observed that Ghanaians are generally healthy when they arrive in the US, but that their health declines over time. Participants identified four causes of this perceived deterioration: changes in health behaviors, increased stress, environmental exposures, and barriers to health care. Participants see themselves as being at risk for many health problems resulting from changes in lifestyle that follow immigration. Although some vulnerabilities are unique to their experience as immigrants, many of the risk factors they described are the same as those that affect other residents in the communities in which they live.

Black women in the USA have both a higher percentage of late-stage diagnoses as well as the highest rates of mortality from breast cancer when compared to women of other ethnic subgroups. Additionally, Black women have the second highest prevalence of cervical cancer. Many reports evaluating the cancer outcomes of Black women combine data on African-born immigrants and US-born Blacks. This categorization ignores subtle yet important cultural differences between the two groups, which may ultimately affect breast and cervical cancer screening practices. Therefore, this study investigated knowledge and awareness levels of breast and cervical cancer screening practices among female African-born immigrants to the USA residing in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Data were collected from 38 participants through key informant interviews, focus group sessions, and a sociodemographic questionnaire over a 3-month study period. Results suggest that fatalism, stigma, and privacy are among the major factors that affect the decision to seek preventative screening measures for breast and cervical cancer among this population. Additionally, the study implies that cervical cancer awareness is significantly lower among this population when compared to breast cancer. This study highlights differences between women of African descent residing in the USA and the need for continued research to increase understanding of the manner in which immigrant status affects health-seeking behavior. This information is critical for researchers, physicians, and public health educators aiming to design culturally appropriate interventions to effectively reduce the prevalence of breast and cervical cancer among female African immigrants living in the USA.

Background A growing body of literature indicates that, worldwide, immigrants experience health deterioration after their arrival into their adopted country, and moreover, they have lower vitamin D compared to the native-born population. We plan to review if the levels of vitamin D are comparable between different ethnic groups in different regions of the world with those of native-born populations and to identify the possible associations between vitamin D deficiency and disease status among immigrants. Methods/design A systematic review and meta-analysis will be conducted following the methods of the Cochrane handbook for systematic reviews. A literature search was performed to identify studies on immigrants and vitamin D. The primary outcome is vitamin D levels, and the secondary outcome is any vitamin D deficiency-related disease. Study design and participant characteristics will be extracted, including ethnicity, country of birth and/or origin, and the host country. Descriptive and meta-analytic summaries of the outcomes will be derived. Distiller-SR and RevMan will be used respectively for data management and meta-analysis. Discussion This systematic review may partially help clarify vitamin D-related health deterioration in migrants; moreover, to develop a global guideline that specifies sub-populations, in which the evidence and vitamin D-related recommendations might differ from the overall immigrant population. Systematic review registration PROSPERO CRD42018086729