Health status of Marriage Immigrant Women and Children from Multicultural Families and Health Policy Recommendations

Abstract

The characteristics of multi-cultural families have changed according to rapid increase in their number and the length of stay. In this context, this study aimed to identify health status and health service requirements of women and children of multi- cultural families and to suggest improvement policies on health service support based on these findings. For this purpose, this study reviewed health support policies and programs for multicultural families in Korea, Canada and Australia, analyzed health surveys of marriage migrant women, and conducted qualitative research including focus group interview(FGI) and in-depth interview. This study found several important issues through surveys and statistics. First, a part of marriage migrant women have problems with delayed first pre-natal care during pregnancy, childbirth, postpartum and parenting. Second, marriage migrant women have difficulties and barriers utilizing health care service because of 'communication problems with medical staffs', 'burden of medical expenses', 'lack of understanding medical terms', and 'low health literacy'. Third, not a few of women and children from multicultural families have mental health problems. Through FGI and in-depth interview with practicing professionals and marriage migrant women, this study also presents the current situations, difficulties and improvements of health support programmes for multicultural families in Korea. With respect to these findings, this study suggests ten health policy recommendations for marriage-immigrant women and children from multicultural families. ? Enhancing health management scheme in existing multicultural family policy and programs for the basic health rights of multi-cultural family ? Providing essential health services systematically in the early stages of settlement for marriage-immigrant women. ? Providing continued health services in accordance with multi- cultural family`s life-cycle perspectives - early stage in immigration, childbirth, parenting stage, and settlement stage ? Creating migrant-friendly health services step by step in district health centers and hospitals for providing migrant-sensitive services for marriage-immigrant women. ? Operating immigrant women's health center within district health centers or, jointly operating it with multicultural family support centers ? Differentiating health services between urban and rural areas, tailored different needs of multicultural families ? Strengthening support for mental health services of women and children of multicultural families ? Providing integrated service by strengthening the networks among health sectors and social support sectors in relation with multicultural family's programmes ? Developing and disseminate migrant-sensitive multilingual materials and information on health education suit for characteristics of multicultural family with variety of nationalities ? Monitoring and producing statistics periodically and researches on health of multicultural families

For this study identifies health status and health service needs requirements of migrant-women and children from multicultural families, and suggests improvements of policies on health service support, it is expected to contribute to health promotion of migrant-women and children from multicultural families.