Children in Immigrant Families: Advocacy Within and Beyond the Pediatric Emergency Department

Eric A Russell; Carmelle Tsai; Julie M Linton

doi:10.1016/j.cpem.2020.100779

Children in Immigrant Families: Advocacy Within and Beyond the Pediatric Emergency Department

Clin Pediatr Emerg Med. 2020 Jun;21(2):100779. doi: 10.1016/j.cpem.2020.100779. Epub 2020 Sep 9.

Authors

Eric A Russell¹, Carmelle Tsai², Julie M Linton³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Pediatrics, Section of Emergency Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital, Houston, TX.
² Department of Pediatrics, Division of Emergency Medicine, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine and Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA.
³ Department of Pediatrics and Assistant Dean for Admissions, University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville and Prisma Health Children's Hospital, Greenville, SC.

Abstract

In the United States, 1 in 4 children lives in an immigrant family. State and national policies have historically precluded equitable access to health care among children in immigrant families. More recently, increasingly restrictive policies, political rhetoric, and xenophobic stances have made immigrant families less able to access health care and less comfortable in attempting to do so, thus increasing the likelihood that patients will present to the emergency department. Once in the emergency department, language, cultural, and health literacy barriers make providing high-quality care potentially challenging for some families. Emergency care professionals can therefore glean critical insight regarding inequities from clinical work to inform advocacy and policy changes at institutional, community, regional, and national levels.

Keywords: access to care; emergency department; health literacy; immigrant; immigration; language barrier.