Minority Health and Health Equity Archive
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/21769
Welcome to the Minority Health and Health Equity Archive (MHHEA), an electronic archive for digital resource materials in the fields of minority health and health disparities research and policy. It is offered as a no-charge resource to the public, academic scholars and health science researchers interested in the elimination of racial and ethnic health disparities.
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Item Community Demographics and Access to Health Care among U.S. Hispanics(2009) Gresenz, Carole Roan; Rogowski, Jeannette; Escarce, José J.OBJECTIVE: To explore the influence of the communities in which Hispanics live on their access to health care. DATA: 1996-2002 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey data, linked to secondary data sources and including 14,504 observations from 8,371 Mexican American respondents living in metropolitan areas. STUDY DESIGN: We use multivariate probit regression models, stratified by individuals' insurance status, for analyses of four dependent variables measuring access to health care. We measure community characteristics at the zip code tabulation area level, and key independent variables of interest are the percentage of the population that speaks Spanish and percentage of the population that is immigrant Hispanic. Each of these measures is interacted with individual-level measures of nativity and length of U.S. residency. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: For Mexican American immigrants, living in an area populated by relatively more Spanish speakers or more Hispanic immigrants is associated with better access to care. The associations are generally stronger for more recent immigrants compared with those who are better established. Among U.S.-born Mexican Americans who are uninsured, living in areas more heavily populated with Spanish-speaking immigrants is negatively associated with access to care. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that characteristics of the local population, including language and nativity, play an important role in access to health care among U.S. Hispanics, and point to the need for further study, including analyses of other racial and ethnic groups, using different geographic constructs for describing the local population, and, to the extent possible, more specific exploration of the mechanisms through which these characteristics may influence access to care.Item Diabetes meanings among those without diabetes: explanatory models of immigrant Latinos in rural North Carolina(2004) Arcury, Thomas A; Skelly, Anne H; Gesler, Wilbert M; Dougherty, Molly CThe prevalence of type 2 diabetes is increasing in the United States, particularly among minority individuals. Primary prevention programs for diabetes must be designed to address the beliefs of the populations they target. Little research has investigated the beliefs of those who do not have diabetes. This analysis uses in-depth interviews collected from Latino immigrants, not diagnosed with diabetes, living in a rural US community. Structured by the explanatory models [EM] of Illness framework, this analysis delineates the EMs of diabetes in this community. A significant number of the participants had little knowledge and few beliefs about diabetes. The EMs of those with knowledge of diabetes were varied, but several beliefs were widely held:(a) diabetes is a serious disease that is based on heredity or is inherent in all persons, (b) diabetes can result from several factors, including strong emotions and lifestyle characteristics (an unhealthy diet, not taking care of oneself), (c) beliefs about strong emotion and the importance of blood are related to diabetes causes, symptoms and treatment, and (d) a major and undesirable outcome of diabetes is weight loss. These results provide information for the design of health programs for the prevention of type 2 diabetes.