Immigrant Receptivity, Community Health Contexts and Access to Physician Care: Children of Mexican Immigrants in Emerging versus Established Immigrant Destination Areas

Deborah Roempke Graefe, Pennsylvania State University
Gordon F. De Jong, Pennsylvania State University
Stephanie Howe Hasanali, Pennsylvania State University
Chris Galvan, Pennsylvania State University

A welcoming versus hostile receptivity climate toward immigrants held by local community residents of emerging compared with established destination areas is an untested theoretical explanation for group inequality in access to physician care for immigrant children. We address this proposition for children of Mexican immigrants utilizing data measuring local labor market area immigrant receptivity climate based on content analysis of a random sample of newspaper articles published on immigrants/immigration across U.S. labor market areas from 1995-2010. Receptivity climate and community health context data are integrated with pooled individual-level measures of access to physician care from the nationally representative Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) panels for 1996, 2001, 2004, and 2008. Multi-level modeling tests hypothesized associations between access to health care and the immigrant receptivity climate, versus multiple state and local community health context indicators as alternative explanations, controlling for family and individual-level characteristics.