Variation in disease in children according to immigrant background

Abstract

Background: A growing proportion of children born in Europe are born to immigrant parents. Knowledge about their health is essential for preventive and curative medicine and health services planning. Objective: To investigate differences in diagnoses given in secondary and tertiary healthcare between Norwegian-born children to immigrant and non-immigrant parents. Methods: Data from the Medical Birth Registry of Norway, the Norwegian Patient Registry and Statistics Norway were linked by the national personal identification number. The study population included children born in Norway aged 0–10 years between 2008 and 2018 ( N=1,015,267). Diagnostic categories from three main domains of physical health, given in secondary or tertiary care; infections, non-infectious medical conditions and non-infectious neurological conditions were included from 2008 onwards. Hazards of diagnoses by immigrant background were assessed by Cox regressions adjusted for sex and birth year. Results: Children of immigrants generally had higher hazards than children with Norwegian background of some types of infections, obesity, nutrition-related disorders, skin diseases, blood disease and genital disease. Children of immigrants from Africa also had higher hazards of cerebral palsy, cerebrovascular diseases and epilepsy. Conversely, most groups of children of immigrants had lower hazards of acute lower respiratory tract infections, infections of the musculoskeletal system, infections of the central nervous system, diseases of the circulatory system, hearing impairment, immune system disorders, chronic lower respiratory disease and headache conditions. Conclusions: Children of immigrants did not present with overall worse health than children without immigrant background, but the distribution of health problems varied between groups.

Intersectional inequalities in paediatric infectious diseases: a national cohort study in Sweden

“…However, the Norwegian study reported an increased risk of specific infections, for example, tuberculosis. 5 The ability of sociodemographic variables to discriminate between children with and without infections was poor indicating that a small proportion of the individual risk of infection was due to the social context. 14 Consequently, our results support broad public health policies reaching all children over interventions targeting children in high-risk groups.…”

Diagnoses of infectious diseases among Norwegian-born children to immigrant parents – the role of parental socioeconomic position

“…Children who had a specific infection diagnosis at least once during the specified age and time frame were classified as having the respective diagnosis. Categories of infectious diseases corresponded to our previous article [16], but we did not include separate categories for four diagnostic categories with a low number of cases; tuberculosis, infections of the central nervous system, fungal and parasitic infections and genital infections (all with N < 3500). All 11 categories of infection diagnoses are included in the variable total infections.…”

“…Each participant was followed from 2008 or year of birth (if later than 2008) until year of diagnosis, year of death, year of reaching 10 years of age (if earlier than 2018), or until the end of 2018. Analyses were performed in STATA 16.…”

“…In a study on somatic disease diagnoses in secondary/tertiary healthcare among children born in Norway with different immigrant backgrounds, we have previously shown higher hazards of infectious diseases diagnoses, including intestinal infections, tuberculosis, viral infections, fungal and parasitic infections and skin infections, among children born in Norway to immigrant parents compared to children with a Norwegian background [16]. In the current article we aim to assess whether household income and parental education is associated with infectious disease diagnoses by parental region of origin, and whether parental education and household income can explain previously described differences in hazard of infectious disease diagnoses by region of origin.…”

Migration and Health: Time for a new research agenda

“…They are more likely to report being alone and being bullied; on the other hand, they get along better with adults than with their peers and are more helpful and sharing with others [4,5]. Children of migrants did not have overall worse health than children without migrant background, but the distribution of health problems varied between groups [6]. A key take- away from the majority of the articles is that social inequalities (as measured by integration, language, length of stay, and working role) is the main explanation for differences observed.…”