Comparison of Health Status and Health Care Services Utilization between Migrants and Natives of the Same Ethnic Origin—The Case of Hong Kong

Abstract

Based on the 2009 Thematic Household Survey in Hong Kong, this study compared health status and utilization of health care services in Hong Kong between migrants from Mainland China and natives. Overall, Mainland migrants reported lower socioeconomic conditions, worse health status, and less health care services utilization than the natives. After controlling for socio-demographic factors, we found that the migrants were 1.2 times more likely to report fair or poor health and 0.78 times less likely to report having a usual source of care, compared with the natives. Mainland migrants also had fewer physician visits and relied more on the public sector. Within the migrant group, those who had language advantage had more visits, and the recent arrivals who stayed in Hong Kong for three years or less had fewer visits and were far less likely to have a usual source of care. The findings underscore migration as an important social determinant of health in Hong Kong. A combination of targeted social and health policies is needed to help Mainland migrants better integrate into society and to improve their access to care. Programs should be tailored to address varying needs from different subgroups among migrants.

Health service utilisation of rural‐to‐urban migrants in Guangzhou, China: does employment status matter?

“…The annual hospitalisation rate of migrants in Guangzhou (6.5%) was higher than that of Beijing (4.9%) and Shenzhen (5.4%) , but lower than that of general urban (9.1%) and rural populations (9.0%) , which might be related to better health status of migrants. In our study, the proportion of migrants who were not hospitalised when they should have been was 10.9%, smaller than that among migrants based in small‐to‐medium‐sized enterprises (31.4%) .…”

“…Consistent with other studies, we find low utilisation of outpatient services for migrants in Guangzhou. The recent two‐week physician visit rate was 4.0%, close to that of Beijing (4.8%) but lower than that of Shenzhen (7.0%) , and much lower than that of urban (13.3%) and rural populations overall (12.8%) . The percentage of not visiting a doctor after falling ill of migrants was 50.2%, significantly higher than that of urban (14.5%) and rural general populations (16.9%) .…”

“…Rural‐to‐urban migrants have long been considered a vulnerable group : because of poor living conditions , insufficient health knowledge , and lack of social support and social integration , they are susceptible to a variety of health problems such as infectious diseases , sexually transmitted diseases and mental health problems . In addition, migrants tend to use health services less .…”

The association between the supply and utilization of community-based primary care and child health in a context of hospital-oriented healthcare system in urban districts of Guangdong, China: a panel dataset, 2014–2016

“…This may be explained by the financial and geographical accessibility, and the comprehensiveness of primary care [11,27,38,48]. However, there are studies indicating that interprovincial migrants' utilization of healthcare service is lower compared to that of local district residents in the district [17,18,21,49,50]. Since the two primary care indicators did not fully capture the interprovincial migrants' true utilization rate of services, combined with their reported underuse of healthcare service, our results may underestimate the association between greater utilization of primary care and improved health of the interprovincial migrants.…”

Joint China-US Call for Employing a Transdisciplinary Approach to Emerging Infectious Diseases

“…Risk are heightened as rural to urban migration brings a constant stream of new organisms to human-and pestintensified areas. International migration for employment opportunities may also bring the urban poor into circumstances ripe for pathogen transmission (Liu et al 2013). Increasing trade and novel business ventures have led some looking for employment to cross country borders, exposing them to biological, social, and healthcare environments that are unfamiliar and greatly increasing susceptible workers' chances of acquiring new infections through contact with wildlife, domestic animals, food, or human sources of diseases.…”