Immigrants' Health Care: Review and Call for Social Work Research and Action

Background: Immigrants constitute 13% of the total population in the United States. Immigrants experience significant health care inequalities and barriers in accessing health care in the United States. Social Work is committed to the provision of social services in health care settings to underserved and marginalized populations, including immigrants. The purpose of the present study was to explore what content related to immigrants and healthcare has been published by social work journals. We sought to answer: What is the content in the major journals of social work available to researchers and practitioners related to immigrants’ health care?

Method: Systematic review methods were employed to search for all studies on immigrant health care in social work journals through February 2016. Immigrant health care was defined as the maintenance or improvement of physical, mental, and behavioral health via the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, illness, injury, and other impairments among immigrants. A systematic search of the top 12 social work journals was conducted in Web of Science and PubMed using a keyword search (keywords: immigrant AND health care OR primary care OR mental health OR physical health OR behavioral health) in all fields to locate studies related to immigrant health care. Studies were independently screened and coded, and discrepancies were resolved through discussion.

Results: A total of 130 citations were identified and the full texts of 62 articles were then screened for eligibility. Thirty-seven studies met eligibility for inclusion in this review: 19 studies of mental health, 16 studies of health care utilization, six studies of physical health care, three studies of epidemic/chronic diseases, and one study on oral health.

Conclusions and Implications:  Social work literature is lacking on both immigrant children’s health care and on African immigrants and Middle East immigrants. The majority of the extant social work literature focuses on adult, Asian, or Latino immigrants. Over 67% of the literature  is cross-sectional. We identified one quasi-experimental design and no experimental design studies, suggesting a need for study designs that allow the testing of causal questions and the development and testing of clinical interventions. Social Work professionals has a responsibility to marginalized populations, and an opportunity to be leaders in working with immigrant populations.