Health and Social Care in the Community
Volume 19, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 70-79

Access to health-care in Canadian immigrants: A longitudinal study of the National Population Health Survey (Article)

Setia M.S.* , Quesnel-Vallee A. , Abrahamowicz M. , Tousignant P. , Lynch J.
  • a Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
  • b Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada, Department of Sociology, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
  • c Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
  • d Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
  • e School of Health Sciences, University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA, Australia, Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom

Abstract

Immigrants often lose their health advantage as they start adapting to the ways of the new society. Having access to care when it is needed is one way that individuals can maintain their health. We assessed the healthcare access in Canadian immigrants and the socioeconomic factors associated with access over a 12-year period. We compared two measures of healthcare access (having a regular doctor and reporting an unmet healthcare need in the past 12 months) among immigrants and Canadian-born men and women, aged more than 18 years. We applied a logistic random effects model to evaluate these outcomes separately, in 3081 males and 4187 females from the National Population Health Survey (1994-2006). Adjusting for all covariates, immigrant men and women (white and non-white) had similar odds of having a regular doctor than the Canadian-born individuals (white immigrants: males OR: 1.32, 95% C.I.: 0.89-1.94, females OR: 1.14, 95% C.I.: 0.78-1.66; non-white immigrants: males OR: 1.28, 95% C.I.: 0.73-2.23, females OR: 1.23, 95% C.I.: 0.64-2.36). Interestingly, non-white immigrant women had significantly fewer unmet health needs (OR: 0.32, 95% C.I.: 0.17-0.59). Among immigrants, time since immigration was associated with having access to a regular doctor (OR per year: 1.02, 95% C.I.: 1.00-1.04). Visible minority female immigrants were least likely to report an unmet healthcare need. In general, there is little evidence that immigrants have worse access to health-care than the Canadian-born population. © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Author Keywords

Epidemiological approaches Access to health-care visible minorities

Index Keywords

longitudinal study health care survey Health Care Surveys Longitudinal Studies human middle aged Aged Humans male Canada Emigrants and Immigrants female Article organization and management adult migration Health Services Accessibility public health health care delivery National Health Programs
Link
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-78650092367&doi=10.1111%2fj.1365-2524.2010.00950.x&partnerID=40&md5=a0e7acdb4306742f66541a720b7c37dc
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2524.2010.00950.x
ISSN: 09660410
Cited by: 31
Original Language: English