In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • A Note from the Editor
  • Virginia M. Brennan, PhD, MA

Four themes run through this issue of the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved:

  • Theme 1: Immigrant Health

  • Theme 2: Women's Health

  • Theme 3: Health Disparities

  • Theme 4: Health Policy

The issue closes with several book reviews.

Theme 1: Immigrant Health. Two commentaries initiate the theme of immigrant health. Still Missing: Undocumented Immigrants in Health Care Reform (by Charlene Galarneau) and Improving Medical Care for Detained Immigrants (by Nicole Therrien and Angela Mattie) both explore the intersections of immigration status, the law, and health. Sanchez-Youngman and colleagues empirically studied popular opinion regarding health coverage for undocumented immigrants in New Mexico and report on that research here. Ramin Asgary and Nora Segar conducted qualitative research with 35 people (mostly male and African) seeking asylum in the U.S. and 15 expert providers and advocates concerning access to health care. They report on individual, structural, and assimilation-related barriers and recommend specific policy-related and clinical improvements. Blanchfield and colleagues from Massachusetts General Hospital and the Cambridge Health Alliance studied the costs associated with providing language interpretation services for patients, and propose a framework for identifying such costs here. Guendelman and colleagues from UC-Berkeley and UCSF studied the interaction of birthplace, body size, and gender among Mexican Americans. They report that Mexican American immigrant women are at greater risk than Mexican American immigrant men for large body size, as are U.S.-born Mexican American women whose preferred language is Spanish.

Theme 2: Women's Health. The theme of women's health begins with a commentary by Christine Dehlendorf and Tracy Weitz on the vanishing availability of abortion services for women with low incomes and racial/ethnic minority women in the United States. Next, Cheryl Cooper and Joyce Ballard contribute a literature review on bone mineral density in Hispanic women, and explore the implications for culturally-specific osteoporosis education as the proportion of Hispanics in the U.S. continues to increase.

The rate of breast-feeding initiation among patients at eight Philadelphia Health Centers, as reported here by Robbins and colleagues, was 42%—i.e., less than optimal but still sizeable. Whether or not breastfeeding was initiated and sustained appeared to vary more by health center and hospital than by patient characteristics such as the mother's race and age, which gives rise to system-level recommendations for improvement. Roncancio and colleagues from the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Women's Health at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston [End Page vi] studied the extent to which Hispanic women believe their health care providers have primary control over the woman's health, with survey data from over 1,000 women at the UTMB clinic. The more acculturated to the U.S. the respondent was, the less she believed her provider controlled her health, and the more fatalistic she was, the more she believed it. The study has implications for culturally tailored women's health care in Hispanic communities.

Abraído-Lanza and colleagues studied health care satisfaction by means of 220 structured interviews with Latina immigrants in New York City (the sample was predominantly from the Dominican Republic and older than 40 years of age). Waiting times worked against satisfaction and better physician-patient interactions in its favor. Finally, Bynum and colleagues looked at HPV vaccine uptake among 363 young (ages 18–26) African american women, who are at elevated risk for cervical cancer. Knowing more about the HPV vaccine increased the likelihood of uptake, giving a clear pointer for educational interventions.

Theme 3: Health Disparities. Always with us, it seems, are disparities in health and health care between populations overall and medically underserved populations. In this issue, we see the broad scope of socioeconomic, regional, and gender health disparities within the Caribbean country of Jamaica (Paul Bourne) and the deeply impoverished West African country of Burkina Faso (Okolo et al.)

Additionally, three papers explore health disparities in the U.S.: Valerie Johnston and Yuhua Bao, using a nationally representative sample, studied the timeliness with which individuals received care (±60 minutes) in emergency departments (EDs). They found some significant race-ethnicity differences and...

pdf

Share