Social determinants of health in Canada's immigrant population: results from the National Population Health Survey
Abstract
As part of the Metropolis project -- a large-scale investigation of immigration and integration, including well-being of immigrants in a number of areas of social life -- in this paper we investigate the social determinants of health in Canada's immigrant population using Canada's National Population Health Survey (NPHS). Specifically, we examine differences in health status and health care utilization between immigrants and non-immigrants, immigrants of European and non-European origin, and immigrants of 10 years' residence in Canada. We also examine social determinants of health care utilization and health status in immigrants and non-immigrants, and evaluate the utility of large-scale, national databases for these purposes. Our conceptual approach draws upon a 'population health' perspective, which suggests that the most important antecedents of human health status are not medical care inputs and health behaviours (smoking, diet, exercise, etc.), but rather social and economic characteristics of individuals and populations. We find no obvious, consistent pattern of association between socio-economic characteristics and immigration characteristics on the one hand, and health status on the other, in the NPHS data. This does not mean that socio-economic factors in Canada are not influential in shaping immigrants' health status. In fact, the results of the logistic regression models calculated for immigrants and non-immigrants on four outcome variables in this study suggest that socio-economic factors are more important for immigrants than non-immigrants, although in ways that defy a simple explanation. The complexity of immigrants' experiences, combined with the inherent limitations of cross-sectional survey data are discussed as major limitations to this kind of research.Download Info
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Bibliographic Info
Article provided by Elsevier in its journal Social Science & Medicine.
Volume (Year): 51 (2000)
Issue (Month): 11 (December)
Pages: 1573-1593
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Keywords: Immigrants Population health Social determinants of health Health surveys Canada;References
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Steven Prus & Zhiqiu Lin, 2005. "Ethnicity and Health: An Analysis of Physical Health Differences across Twenty-one Ethnocultural Groups in Canada," Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers 143, McMaster University.
- Ahmed, Nina, 2005. "Intergenerational Impact of Immigrants' Selection and Assimilation on Health Outcomes of Children," Analytical Studies Branch Research Paper Series 2005247e, Statistics Canada, Analytical Studies Branch.
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