Uninsured Latino children more likely not to get medical care
From EurekAlert! - Breaking News:
Writing in the September issue of Pediatrics, Dr. Flores, one of the country's foremost experts on multicultural health care issues, sought to identify the risk factors for and consequences of being uninsured in Latino children.
Latinos are the most uninsured racial/ethnic group of children in the United States, with 22 percent (approximately 3 million) of Latino children less than 18 years old having no health insurance coverage in 2005.
Our study is the first to comprehensively and simultaneously look at a variety of factors, including immigration status, family income, child age, the number of siblings, parental employment status, duration of parental residence in the US, parental educational attainment and marital status," Dr. Flores said.
After interviewing some 900 Latino families drawn from the greater Boston metropolitan area, Dr. Flores and his team found that after adjustment, parental non-citizenship, having two parents work, low family income, and older child age are associated with being an uninsured child, but Latino ethnicity is not.
"These findings indicate specific high-risk populations that might benefit most from targeted Medicaid and SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program) outreach and enrollment efforts," Dr. Flores says.
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