Immigrant Children With Special Health Care Needs: A Review

Abstract

This review was conducted to evaluate the current literature surrounding immigrant children with special health care needs. The focus of the review was to determine what evaluations have been done to educate primary care providers on general characteristics of this high-risk population and barriers that may impact care of the child. A review of the literature was conducted looking at PUBMED/MEDLINE and Cochrane databases. The search terms were defined to capture articles with key words relating to both immigrants and children with special health care needs. Critical review of the articles was performed in order to assess the type of article and implications to the population being studied. The literature review revealed 26 total articles from PUBMED/MEDLINE database. Of those, 4 were excluded as they were not available in English. An additional 5 were excluded as they did not pertain to immigrant children with special health care needs. The remaining 17 articles were classified as to article type, with predominance being structured patient interviews or surveys (41%). There were no systematic reviews identified in the Cochrane database regarding immigrant children with special health care needs. The families of immigrant child with special health care needs often face barriers with access to care and engagement in the health care system and within social systems. Providers should be aware of these barriers, and further studies should be conducted to determine the best approach to improve access to care in immigrant children with special health care needs.