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"Country of Origin" Working Group on Hispanic Health
Despite the geographic proximity of Latin America, Europe and Africa have been the primary sources of immigration to the US for the last four centuries. Over the last several decades, however, the majority of new immigrants have arrived from Spanish-speaking countries, primarily Mexico, the Caribbean islands and Central America. The rapid growth of the Hispanic population in the US has led to an historic shift in the demographic composition of the United States which will have important implications for the health of the population. Therefore, a clear imperative exists to establish close ties between the public health community in the US and these neighboring countries.
The purpose of this project is to develop collaboration among public health professionals and epidemiologists in Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico and the US. The primary link will be between Mexico and the US, given the relative size of the populations involved and the resources that are currently available to the organizers of this project. The project will jointly pursue two separate topics in public health – cardiovascular diseases and reproductive outcomes. We anticipate that the project will develop in several phases. Work will include:
- Testing the value of a country-specific approach in public health research on Hispanic populations through careful and detailed description of the health conditions of each group. Based on considerations of population size and extant secondary data, we will focus on Puerto Rico, Cuba and Mexico.
- Evaluating how useful the concept of the “Hispanic paradox” is as an organizing framework for the investigation of the health status of Hispanic populations.
- Focusing on specific mechanisms and attempt to define and measure those elements of the social experience that negatively influence health status without the assumption that they are inversely correlated with income, education and occupation.
Cardiovascular Disease and Diabetes Working Group
Country of Origin Reproductive and Perinatal Health Workgroup
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