Affiliations 

  • 1 Department of Pharmaceutical Care, Faculty of Pharmacy, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand
  • 2 Evidence for Policy and Practice Information and Coordinating Centre (EPPI-Centre), UCL Institute of Education, University College London, London, UK
  • 3 Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, The Ottawa Hospital, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
  • 4 School of Epidemiology and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
  • 5 School of Pharmacy, Monash University Malaysia, Jalan Lagoon Selatan, 46150, Bandar Sunway, Selangor, Malaysia. nathorn.chaiyakunapruk@monash.edu
Int J Equity Health, 2019 05 06;18(1):64.
PMID: 31060570 DOI: 10.1186/s12939-019-0970-x

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Everyone has the right to achieve the standard of health and well-being. Migrants are considered as vulnerable populations due to the lack of access to health services and financial protection in health. Several interventions have been developed to improve migrant population health, but little is known about whether these interventions have considered the issue of equity as part of their outcome measurement.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the evidence of health interventions in addressing inequity among migrants.

METHODS: We adopted a two-stage searching approach to ensure the feasibility of this review. First, reviews of interventions for migrants were searched from five databases: PubMed, Cochrane, CINAHL, PsycINFO, and EMBASE until June 2017. Second, full articles included in the identified reviews were retrieved. Primary studies included in the identified reviews were then evaluated as to whether they met the following criteria: experimental studies which include equity aspects as part of their outcome measurement, based on equity attributes defined by PROGRESS-Plus factors (place of residence, race/ethnicity, occupation, gender, religion, education, socio-economic status, social capital, and others). We analysed the information extracted from the selected articles based on the PRISMA-Equity guidelines and the PROGRESS-Plus factors.

RESULTS: Forty-nine reviews involving 1145 primary studies met the first-stage inclusion criteria. After exclusion of 764 studies, the remaining 381 experimental studies were assessed. Thirteen out of 381 experimental studies (3.41%) were found to include equity attributes as part of their outcome measurement. However, although some associations were found none of the included studies demonstrated the effect of the intervention on reducing inequity. All studies were conducted in high-income countries. The interventions included individual directed, community education and peer navigator-related interventions.

CONCLUSIONS: Current evidence reveals that there is a paucity of studies assessing equity attributes of health interventions developed for migrant populations. This indicates that equity has not been receiving attention in these studies of migrant populations. More attention to equity-focused outcome assessment is needed to help policy-makers to consider all relevant outcomes for sound decision making concerning migrants.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.