Self-Rated Health Status and Health Care Utilization Among Immigrant and Non-Immigrant Israeli Jewish Women

Abstract

A greater proportion of immigrant versus non-immigrant women reported poor perceived health status (17% vs. 4%), chronic disease (61% vs. 38%), disability (31% vs. 18%) and depressive mood symptoms (52% vs. 38%). Lower rates of immigrant women visited a gynecologist regularly (57% vs. 83%) and were satisfied with their primary care physician. Lower rates of immigrants reported discussing health promotion issues such as smoking, diet, physical activity, HRT, and calcium intake with their physician. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings for designing services that will effectively promote immigrant women's health, both in Israel and elsewhere.

Women's preferences for their gynecologist or obstetrician

“…Previous studies in different areas of medicine were of assistance in identifying those items. For example, immigration status was added as an item because a previous study identified a different health care utilization among immigrant and nonimmigrant Israeli Jewish women [16]. A final questionnaire was compiled after a pilot survey of 20 women.…”

Immigration, Gender, and Psychosocial Adjustment: A Study of 150 Immigrant Couples in Israel

“…Several studies of female immigrants have shown higher rates of depression, chronic illness, and underutilization of the host country's health services, especially preventive care, than among non-immigrant women (Anderson, Dyck, & Lynam, 1997;Remennick, 1999b;Gross, BrammliGreenberg, & Remennick, 2001;Hyman & Guruge, 2000). Several scholars included gender comparisons in their studies of psychosocial adjustment and mental health among Asian and Latina immigrants in the US and Canada (see a critical review of this literature by Salant & Lauderdale, 2003), as well as in general health indices among immigrant populations (e.g., Gross et al, 2001;Newbold, 2003). Despite broad variance in these studies' target populations and methods, many of them have shown that the least integrated immigrant women manifest the poorest outcomes in terms of both physical and mental health.…”

The healthcare experiences of Arab Israeli women in a reformed healthcare system

“…Recent immigrants included women who had been in Israel for 10 years or less at the time of the study (i.e., immigrated between 1989 and 1998). They were identified by their response to two questions included in the questionnaire about the year they came to Israel and the country they came from (see [33]). …”