Immigrant Women’s Access to Healthcare Services in the United States: A Qualitative Meta-Synthesis

Abstract

Immigrant women’s perceptions and needs are not well-represented in the health literature. In order to address the gap, this study explores personal and system-level barriers to accessing healthcare services among immigrant women, and their coping mechanisms to overcome these barriers. Using eight databases, a total of 147 studies were retrieved. Of these studies, 11 qualitative studies were selected and synthesized. A theory-generating qualitative meta-synthesis (QMS) approach was used to analyze and synthesize raw qualitative data. The QMS results indicate that immigrant women face personal-level barriers (lack of transportation, insurance, trust, inadequate financial capacity, and insufficient health information, gender, legal status, language proficiency) and system-level barriers (discrimination, miscommunication, complexity, lack of cultural competence) in accessing healthcare services. Immigrant women mainly rely on family and community support, and cultural solutions as coping strategies to overcome these barriers. Implications include policymakers and healthcare providers should adopt culturally relevant and inclusive approaches, disseminate multi-lingual health information, and work in collaboration with immigrant women and their community support groups to tackle the challenges. Future research may focus on subgroups of immigrant women to develop more culturally competent and practical collaborative solutions, and examine healthcare providers’ perspectives, as well as immigrant women’s perspectives.