What do we know about the health of Spanish Roma people and what has been done to improve it? A scoping review

Abstract

There are few publications related to the health of the Roma community in Spain and even fewer related to health interventions and outcomes. Those that are available have focused on areas such as child health or infectious disease outbreaks. It is important to promote health interventions in Roma communities and longitudinal studies that include a comprehensive vision and account for the social determinants of health.

Prevalence of Insulin Resistance in the Hungarian General and Roma Populations as Defined by Using Data Generated in a Complex Health (Interview and Examination) Survey

“…It has been thoroughly demonstrated that Roma people are overrepresented in marginalized communities and live in unhealthy environments, and their health behaviour is significantly less favourable than that of the non-Roma population [ 38 , 64 , 65 , 66 ]. The health of Roma can be considered as global ill health [ 1 ], based not only on the burden of rare and infectious diseases [ 4 , 5 ], but also on chronic non-communicable diseases of high public health importance, such as cardiometabolic diseases, which are significantly higher among them than in the majority population [ 7 , 8 , 9 , 11 , 12 , 13 , 67 ]. In addition, the access of Roma people to health care is also impaired, resulting in a broad spectrum of unmet health needs [ 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 ].…”

“…Although restrictions exist on collecting statistical data on health and its determinants by ethnic status in the countries where Roma populations are most concentrated (Southern, Central, and Eastern European countries) [ 2 , 3 ], increasing amounts of data from ethically appropriate one-off surveys are available and show that the health of Roma is much worse than that of the general population [ 1 ]. These studies are almost exclusively descriptive ones on the prevalence of certain diseases, especially infectious and certain genetic diseases [ 1 , 4 , 5 ], and of health determinants [ 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 ], especially cardiovascular risk factors [ 10 , 11 , 12 ], while comprehensive exploratory studies are missing.…”

Prevalence of Chronic Diseases and Activity-Limiting Disability among Roma and Non-Roma People: A Cross-Sectional, Census-Based Investigation

“…All of these problems are reflected in the questionable effectiveness of Roma-targeted health interventions [3,4,28,29], showing that program elaboration, monitoring, and evaluation require the development of currently applied epidemiological methods. At present, responsible policy-makers face a scarcity of useful data on the population-level health impact of Roma ethnicity.…”

Untitled

“…En ese sentido, se trata de una investigación aplicada y orientada hacia la mejora de la intervención. En un análisis de la literatura publicada sobre la salud de la población gitana (Fernández, Pesquera y Prieto, 2017), se subrayaba precisamente la escasez de este tipo de publicaciones que no se centran únicamente en analizar la salud de la población gitana, sino que orientan el foco hacia el funcionamiento de los programas y los modelos profesionales. Aunque el modelo de competencia cultural ha recibido diferentes críticas en la literatura científica, se considera que sigue siendo de gran utilidad para el abordaje de las desigualdades en salud (Kirmayer, 2012), siempre y cuando se tengan en cuenta algunas cuestiones ya referidas en la introducción, como evitar una concepción esencialista de la cultura (Jenks, 2011) o no desviar la atención del resto de determinantes sociales de la salud (Fassin, 2011).…”