Undocumented foreign-born Latinos face serious financial and language barriers to quality health care
Where Latinos are born and their immigration status affect the quality of health care they receive in the US, according to Professor Michael Rodr-guez and colleagues from the UCLA Department of Family Medicine and the Network for Multicultural Research on Health and Healthcare based in Los Angeles, California. New information from this just-released study highlights the need for improved health systems for immigrants - documented or undocumented, US-born or foreign-born. Findings are published online this week in the Journal of General Internal Medicine-, published by Springer.
Latinos are one of the fastest growing populations in the US. To date, most of the research on quality of health care has focused on the general Latino population. For the first time, Rodr-guez and the team's work looks at differences by place of birth and immigration status in this group.
Perceived quality of health care is important because how patients rate the quality of care they receive influences their health outcomes. When patients rate their health care as excellent or good, they are more likely to stick to treatment programs and to be motivated to manage their health problems.
The authors analyzed data from the 2007 Pew Hispanic Center/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Latino Health Survey - a nationally representative telephone survey of more than 4,000 Latino adults in the US. They looked at the differences in perceived quality of care, receipt of preventive care, and usual source of health care among US-born Latinos, foreign-born Latino citizens, Latino permanent residents and undocumented Latinos.