Policies Influencing Rural Latino Health Study
Problem
The impact of immigration policies on rural Latino health is unexplored.
According to the 2020 Census, 4.1 million (9 percent), of rural Americans are Hispanic/Latino. Rural communities of U.S.- and foreign-born Hispanics/Latinos face stressors from immigration policies that can be detrimental to their physical and mental health. However, to date, there is little data on the potential negative effects of these policies on rural Latino mental health and health care access. One reason why may be that rural adults, especially those who have low incomes, are foreign-born, do not speak English, and/or do not have a permanent address, are hard to sample and interview.
Understanding the impact of these policies at the county level can be used to inform health policy and develop community-specific interventions to support whole-person health.
Solution
NORC is using a bilingual survey to collect rural Latino perspectives.
The University of California, Merced, commissioned NORC to conduct a survey as part of a larger grant on behalf of the National Institutes of Health to investigate the association between mental health, health care access, and immigration policies among Latinos in rural areas.
We designed and are implementing a probability-based sampling approach (address-based and prepaid cell phone sample) to conduct ~3,000 phone and web-based interviews in English and Spanish with U.S.- and foreign-born Latino adults in seven rural counties in California and seven rural counties in Arizona. The survey will ask participants about:
- Barriers to health care
- Concerns about mental health
- Whether they or someone they know has been impacted by immigration policies (e.g., being deported, being evicted, worrying about law enforcement)
Result
NORC’s findings will offer fresh insight into the social determinants of rural Latino health.
NORC’s research will produce new data and knowledge on the social determinants of Latino health across diverse rural communities. The data will be used to investigate variations in health care access, health status, and the influence of county policy contexts, social climates, and Latinos’ own policy encounters on these outcomes.
Understanding the impact of these policies will help inform health policy and interventions—including community-specific ones—aimed at promoting whole-person health and increasing access to health care and safety net services for Latinos in rural regions.
Are You a Respondent?
Visit the UC Merced Community Health Survey website to learn more or take the survey.
Related Tags
Project Leads
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Barbara Fernandez
Associate DirectorProject Director -
David Dutwin
Senior Vice President of Strategic InitiativesPrincipal Investigator -
Stas Kolenikov
Principal StatisticianChief Statistician -
Brian M. Wells
Senior Research MethodologistChief Methodologist -
Alana D. Knudson
DirectorSubject Matter Expert
“Latino adults in rural areas of the U.S. are an understudied population. By developing and implementing data collection methods and sampling approaches targeted to this population that increase their likelihood of response, we can provide valuable information to shape health policy. ”
