Latin immigrants, especially non-citizens, face a much higher risk of death than their US-born classmates, USC researchers have found.
The findings were published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine on Tuesday.
“We know that non-citizens are more likely to face poverty, quarantine, and inadequate access to health care. This is a mechanism that adversely affects health,” said USC Pharmacy and USC. Jenny S. Guadams, Principal Investigator and Postdoctoral Fellow, said. Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics.
“It’s also widely known that immigrants don’t use much health care,” Guadamuz said. “But they spend less on health care because they are healthier and don’t need it, or are they inaccessible and dead at a young age?”
To date, no studies have investigated the risk of death for young adult Latino immigrants when compared to American-born Latino Americans. This study evaluated differences in overall mortality in the citizenship status of young Latin adults aged 18-44 years who lived in the United States.
Death from excessive cancer also raises questions about the role of citizenship.
Researchers use national health interview survey data from 1998 to 2014 to investigate mortality and health risk factors for 48,000 non-citizens, 16,000 naturalized citizens, and 63,000 US-born citizens. I did.
They died more naturally than their US-born peers due to cardiovascular disorders such as heart disease, stroke and hypertension, and health problems such as metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes and obesity. I found that the risk was high. Citizen. Non-citizens are also at increased risk of death from accidents.
However, non-citizens and naturalized citizens could die from twice as many cancers as American-born Latino Americans.
“Young Latin immigrants face screening and treatment barriers, such as lack of access to insurance and interpreters, and may be more susceptible to cancer deaths because they increase the risk of death from highly treatable cancers. There is a sex, “said Guadams.
Researchers say further research is needed to increase the risk of death from cancer. Early studies suggesting low cancer mortality in immigrants focused primarily on all ages, rather than focusing on young adults.
COVID-19 pandemic can exacerbate inequality
Researchers believe that COVID-19 did not help, but this study does not include recent deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last year, another study by researchers at the Keck School of Medicine at USC found that Latin immigrants of working age (20-54 years) were 11 times more likely to die of COVID-19 than men and women born in the United States. It turned out to be expensive. Latin system. This study is based on 2020 California death certificate data.
The mortality inequality observed in pre-pandemic study data is likely exacerbated by COVID-19 mortality, Guadams said.
“The socio-economic situation that increased the risk of death for young Latino non-citizens in our study has worsened over time,” she said. “COVID-19 may be killing the same migrant population that was already vulnerable to previous deaths due to other social structures.”
Efforts to reduce these disparities should focus on improving the socio-economic status of Latino Americans and access to health care in early adulthood, the researchers said.
About research: Additional authors include Ramon A. Durazo-Arvizu of the Keck School of Medicine at USC, Josefina Flores Morales of the California Population Research Center at UCLA, and Dima M. Qato of the USC School of Pharmacy and the USC Chaeffer Center.
Guadamuz and Flores Morales were funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar program.
More stories about: Healthcare, public health, race and ethnicity
