U.S. Citizen Children of Undocumented Parents: The Link Between State Immigration Policy and the Health of Latino Children.

We examine Latino citizen children in mixed-status families and how their physical health status compares to their U.S. citizen, co-ethnic counterparts. We also examine Latino parents' perceptions of state immigration policy and its implications for child health status. Using the 2015 Latino National Health and Immigration Survey (n = 1493), we estimate a series of multivariate ordered logistic regression models with mixed-status family and perceptions of state immigration policy as primary predictors. We find that mixed-status families report worse physical health for their children as compared to their U.S. citizen co-ethnics. We also find that parental perceptions of their states' immigration status further exacerbate health disparities between families. These findings have implications for scholars and policy makers interested in immigrant health, family wellbeing, and health disparities in complex family structures. They contribute to the scholarship on Latino child health and on the erosion of the Latino immigrant health advantage.

RACE AS LIVED EXPERIENCE: The Impact of Multi-Dimensional Measures of Race/Ethnicity on the Self-Reported Health Status of Latinos.

A growing body of social science research has sought to conceptualize race as a multidimensional concept in which context, societal relations, and institutional dynamics are key components. Utilizing a specially designed survey, we develop and use multiple measures of race (skin color, ascribed race, and discrimination experiences) to capture race as "lived experience" and assess their impact on Latinos' self-rated health status. We model these measures of race as a lived experience to test the explanatory power of race, both independently and as an integrated scale with categorical regression, scaling, and dimensional analyses. Our analyses show that our multiple measures of race have significant and negative effects on Latinos' self-reported health. Skin color is a dominant factor that impacts self-reported health both directly and indirectly. We then advocate for the utilization of multiple measures of race, adding to those used in our analysis, and their application to other health and social outcomes. Our analysis provides important contributions across a wide range of health, illness, social, and political outcomes for communities of color.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place: The relationship between Latino/a's personal connections to immigrants and issue salience and presidential approval.

The Obama administration has simultaneously marketed the prospect of providing undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship through comprehensive immigration reform and overseen mass deportations of mostly Latino immigrants. While it is clear that immigration policy was highly influential to Latino voters in 2012, it remains unclear how this political hypocrisy is being interpreted by Latino voters. As deportations have risen steadily during the Obama administration, there has been little research on how deportations and personal connections to undocumented immigrants have influenced the political attitudes of the Latino/a electorate. Using a nationally representative survey of 800 registered Latino/a voters administered in 2013, we explore the relationships between personal connections to undocumented immigrants and issue salience among Latinos as well as Latinos' views of President Obama. This study finds that registered Latino voters who know deportees and undocumented immigrants are more likely to report that they think the President and Congress should act on immigration policy versus all other policies. Moreover, Latino voters who know someone who is undocumented are less likely to have favorable views towards President Obama. This study has implications for our collective knowledge of how direct and indirect connections to policy outcomes influences the political behavior of the highly influential Latino/a electorate and how political and policy outcomes will be influenced in the future when a much higher proportion of the electorate have such connections.

For the sake of our children: Hispanic immigrant and migrant families' use of folk healing and biomedicine.

This article documents beliefs among Hispanic immigrant and migrant families in central Washington State about the etiology, symptomology, and appropriate treatments for illnesses experienced by their young children. Similar information was gathered from health care staff at several area biomedical facilities. We integrate data from the childhood health project and the authors' previous research to refine the ethnomedical knowledge base and assumptions about the impact of migration histories and acculturative forces on Hispanic health belief systems and therapeutic decision-making. The analysis is situated in the region's political economic context, dominated by agribusiness, which reveals the enmeshed structural forces that influence the children's health care. We conclude that only when cultural and structural factors are considered in concert can these approaches most effectively contribute to understanding family responses to childhood illness at local community levels as well as at broader analytic scales, and to the development of culturally relevant and effective health care.

The feasibility and acceptability of a home-visitation, asthma education program in a rural, Latino/a population.

OBJECTIVES: The effectiveness of community health worker-delivered interventions to decrease environmental triggers for asthma in the home has been well documented in urban populations, but has had little evaluation in rural, Latino/a families. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of a home-visitation intervention designed to decrease environmental triggers for pediatric asthma in rural, Latino/a families. METHODS: Data from a large community health clinic's pediatric asthma program (2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006) were used to retrospectively explore associations between program participation and asthma-related health outcomes. Demographic data were collected on 866 patients. Behavioral outcomes were evaluated in 374 participants. A medical record abstraction was conducted in a subsample of 400 patients to evaluate asthma-related urgent care use. Nonparametric tests were used to compare outcomes before and after the intervention. Demographic attributes associated with program participation were examined using logistic regression. RESULTS: Most (91%) participants were Hispanic, and 61% of participants' caregivers were either seasonal or migrant farmworkers. Over half (61%) of the participants did not complete the full intervention. A statistically significant improvement was found in caregivers' abilities to manage asthma medications and adopt behaviors to decrease triggers inside the home. Behaviors related to decreasing outside triggers did not significantly change. Asthma-related urgent care use significantly decreased; however, there was no association between intervention dose and a decrease in urgent care use. Demographic attributes were generally not associated with program completion, having baseline and exit data on intermediate outcomes, and/or inclusion in the chart review. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that the asthma intervention helped caregivers improve the air quality in their homes and reduce urgent care admissions among pediatric participants. The intervention dose may be less important than taking part in an intervention to the extent feasible or desired by the family. Findings suggest that policy-level interventions need to address reimbursement for home visitation and environmental exposures that are beyond caregiver control, such as support for healthy and affordable housing in farmworker communities.

Perceptions of environmental and occupational health hazards among agricultural workers in Washington State.

This study describes agricultural workers' perceptions of environmental and occupational health issues. Interviews were conducted with 389 agricultural workers in the Yakima Valley of central Washington State in the summers of 2004 and 2005. Undergraduate students from the community conducted interviews in Spanish or English. Environmental and occupational health issues were ranked by frequency of concern, and differences by demographics were evaluated using multivariate analyses. In both 2004 and 2005, agricultural workers expressed high levels of concern about working in hot weather, agricultural injuries, pesticides, and pediatric asthma. Agricultural workers' perceptions of environmental and occupational health issues differed by specific demographics, particularly age and ethnicity. Consideration should be given to these issues when designing research studies, creating educational materials, and developing interventions related to environmental and occupational hazards among agricultural workers.

An FQHC Research Network in Oral Health: enhancing the workforce and reducing disparities.

Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) contribute greatly to reducing health disparities by providing care to underserved communities. Yet these safety-net clinics face chronic manpower shortages and turnover. Practice-Based Research Networks aid in translating medical science from bench to clinical practice. These networks have been used to understand and improve health-care delivery and reduce disparities. Initiatives to strengthen lagging translational research in dentistry have begun, but there is no FQHC research network that addresses oral health. This article reviews the potential for, and outlines a model of, an Oral Health FQHC Research Network. It characterizes the needs for an FQHC research network, describes a successful FQHC research-oriented program, and outlines an Oral Health FQHC Research Network conceptual model. It argues that strengthening FQHCs through involvement of their dental staff in clinical research may enhance their jobs, draw staff closer to the community, and strengthen their ability to reduce health disparities.