Browsing by Author "Ballou, Sarah"

Immigration to Finland has increased substantially in the last decade. Studies have shown links between immigration, lower socioeconomic class, gender, education and ethnicity with access to care, mortality and morbidity. Little attention- until recently - has been paid to the structural inequalities that contribute health disparities as well as how care is delivered to immigrants. In Finland equality is the standard of providing healthcare, rather than an emphasis on at risk groups. Using data from the Migrant Health and Welfare Study, the impact of quality of life, gender, language ability, treatment barriers and year of migration on self-reported health was assessed in 1000 Russian speaking, 1000 Kurdish and 1000 Somali immigrants aged 18-64 living in Finland for at least a year. Results showed that quality of life and gender have the strongest association with self-reported health. The Somali and Russian speaking groups showed a low moderate correlation with self-reported health while the Kurdish group showed a high moderate correlation with self-reported health. Self-reported health was more strongly related to logistical barriers such as waiting times, cost and transportation. Impact of year of migration and language ability were statistically significant at the p<0.05 level to self-reported health. Finally, the relationship between logistical obstacles to health and perceived language ability with self-reported health after controlling for quality of life and year of migration was assessed. Only language ability was found to be statistically significant. Respondents in the study were primarily from urban areas and thus could have influenced results. As Finland becomes increasingly multicultural, healthcare and public health sectors need to rethink their universal healthcare schemes towards a transcultural model that pays special attention to culturally congruent care as well as the special needs of marginalized groups.