International Perspective on Health Literacy and Health Equity: Factors That Influence the Former Soviet Union Immigrants.

Uliana Kostareva,Luba L Ivanov,Eva-Maria Berens,Altyn Aringazina,Maria Lopatina,Cheryl L Albright,Tetine L Sentell,Diane Levin-Zamir

doi:10.3390/ijerph17062155

Abstract

Among the world’s 272 million international migrants, more than 25 million are from the former Soviet Union (FSU), yet there is a paucity of literature available about FSU immigrants’ health literacy. Besides linguistic and cultural differences, FSU immigrants often come from a distinct healthcare system affecting their ability to find, evaluate, process, and use health information in the host countries. In this scoping review and commentary, we describe the health literacy issues of FSU immigrants and provide an overview of FSU immigrants’ health literacy based on the integrated health literacy model. We purposefully consider the three most common locations where FSU immigrants have settled: the USA, Germany, and Israel. For context, we describe the healthcare systems of the three host countries and the two post-Soviet countries to illustrate the contribution of system-level factors on FSU immigrants’ health literacy. We identify research gaps and set a future research agenda to help understand FSU immigrants’ health literacy across countries. Amidst the ongoing global population changes related to international migration, this article contributes to a broad-scope understanding of health literacy among FSU immigrants related to the system-level factors that may also apply to other immigrants, migrants, and refugees.

Highlights

Health literacy has been defined as the ability and motivation of individuals to access, understand, process, and apply health information to make appropriate health decisions to optimize their health [1,2,3].The concept of health literacy lies within the social determinants of health-conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age [4,5].Int
To begin to fill this research gap, we provide an overview of former Soviet Union (FSU) immigrants based on the integrated health literacy model developed by Sørensen et al [3]
We review similar health literacy relevant issues among FSU immigrants residing in the USA, Germany, and Israel

Summary

Introduction

Health literacy has been defined as the ability and motivation of individuals to access, understand, process, and apply health information to make appropriate health decisions to optimize their health [1,2,3].The concept of health literacy lies within the social determinants of health-conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age [4,5].Int. Soviet and Post-Soviet Healthcare Systems of Kazakhstan and the Russian Federation. To understand the contribution of system-level factors on FSU immigrants’ health literacy, it is necessary first to consider the original Soviet and current post-Soviet healthcare systems. The government, based on the centralized planning and administration, financed the provision of basic services through publicly-owned healthcare facilities which were universally accessible and free at the point of delivery across dispersed populations [90,91]. There was a large number of sub-specialists and a vast network of primary care, which was delivered through polyclinics (a collection of outpatient physicians serving patients in one location of a particular area) across urban areas and feldshers (community health workers) in rural areas [90]

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