Reducing the health care burden for marginalised migrants: The potential role for primary care in Europe

O’Donnell, Catherine Agnes, Nicola Burns, Frances Susanne Mair, Christopher Dowrick, Ciaran Clissmann, Maria van den Muijsenbergh, Evelyn van Weel-Baumgarten, Christos Lionis, Maria Papadakaki, Aristoula Saridaki, Tomas de Brun and Anne MacFarlane

Health Policy, 2016, vol. 120, issue 5, 495-508

Abstract: There is a growing interest in the health of migrants worldwide. Migrants, particularly those in marginalised situations, face significant barriers and inequities in entitlement and access to high quality health care. This study aimed to explore the potential role of primary care in mitigating such barriers and identify ways in which health care policies and systems can influence the ability of primary care to meet the needs of vulnerable and marginalised migrants. The study compared routinely available country-level data on health system structure and financing, policy support for language and communication, and barriers and facilitators to health care access reported in the published literature. These were then mapped to a framework of primary care systems to identify where the key features mitigating or amplifying barriers to access lay. Reflecting on the data generated, we argue that culturally-sensitive primary care can play a key role in delivering accessible, high-quality care to migrants in vulnerable situations. Policymakers and practitioners need to appreciate that both individual patient capacity, and the way health care systems are configured and funded, can constrain access to care and have a negative impact on the quality of care that practitioners can provide to such populations. Strategies to address these issues, from the level of policy through to practice, are urgently needed.

Keywords: Migrant access; Primary care; Health care policy; Entitlement; Equity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168851016300744
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:hepoli:v:120:y:2016:i:5:p:495-508

DOI: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2016.03.012

Access Statistics for this article

Health Policy is currently edited by Katrien Kesteloot, Mia Defever and Irina Cleemput

More articles in Health Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu () and ().