Inequalities in Structural Social Capital and Health between Migrant and Local Hypertensive Patients

Wu Zhu; Haitao Li; Hui Xia; Xuejun Wang; Chen Mao

doi:10.5334/aogh.2398

Inequalities in Structural Social Capital and Health between Migrant and Local Hypertensive Patients

Ann Glob Health. 2019 Mar 27;85(1):48. doi: 10.5334/aogh.2398.

Authors

Wu Zhu¹, Haitao Li², Hui Xia³, Xuejun Wang¹, Chen Mao⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan, CN.
² Shenzhen University General Hospital, Shenzhen University Academy of Clinical Medical Sciences, Shenzhen, CN.
³ Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Control, Shenzhen, CN.
⁴ School of Public Health, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, CN.

Abstract

Background: Inequality in health between migrant and local hypertensive patients is an important public health concern. This study aims to examine the associations of registration status with structural social capital and health of hypertensive patients, as well as how structural social capital operates in the relationship between registration status and health.

Methods: We conducted an on-site based cross-sectional study in Shenzhen, China. A total of 1046 participants completed the survey. Information with respect to structural social capital, subjective and objective health outcomes was collected. Multiple logistic or linear regression models were used to test the associations across registration status, structural social capital and health outcomes.

Results: The findings show that migrant hypertensive patients have lower structural social capital in terms of social contacts (10.87 vs. 10.41; β = -0.457, 95% CI: -0.866, -0.048) and poorer health outcomes, i.e., blood pressure control (56.4 vs. 43.6%; OR = 0.557, 95% CI: 0.364, 0.852) when compared to the local individuals. Meanwhile, individuals with lower structural social capital report poorer self-rated health. However, the differences in structural social capital between migrant and local hypertensives explain only a small proportion of the large inequalities in blood pressure control.

Conclusions: Inequalities exist between migrant and local hypertensives in objective but not subjective health outcomes. Structural social capital associates with subjective health outcomes of hypertensive patients only. A modest extent of medication is found by structural social capital of registration health inequalities. Our study suggests that growing contacts providing support for migrant hypertensive patients should be an important goal of future strategies and policies. It also highlights the need for more research on mediating and moderating mechanisms in order to understand the relationship between registration status and health outcomes among hypertensive patients.

© 2019 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

China / epidemiology
Cross-Sectional Studies
Diagnostic Self Evaluation*
Female
Health Status Disparities*
Humans
Hypertension* / diagnosis
Hypertension* / economics
Hypertension* / epidemiology
Hypertension* / psychology
Male
Middle Aged
Needs Assessment
Outcome Assessment, Health Care
Social Capital*
Socioeconomic Factors*
Transients and Migrants / statistics & numerical data*

Grants and funding

This study is funded by the Shenzhen Basic Research Program (JCYJ20160427183317387), Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (2017A030310439), and Natural Science Foundation of Shenzhen University (827000245).