Dataset Information

A Qualitative Evaluation of a Health Access Card for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in a City in Northern England.

ABSTRACT: Refugees and asylum seekers residing in the UK face multiple barriers to accessing healthcare. A Health Access Card information resource was launched in Newcastle upon Tyne in 2019 by Newcastle City Council, intended to guide refugees and asylum seekers living in the city, and the professional organisations that support them, to appropriate healthcare services provided locally. The aim of this qualitative evaluation was to explore service user and professional experiences of healthcare access and utilisation in Newcastle and perspectives on the Health Access Card. Eleven semi-structured interviews took place between February 2020 and March 2021. Participants provided diverse and compelling accounts of healthcare experiences and described cultural, financial and institutional barriers to care. Opportunities to improve healthcare access for these population groups included offering more bespoke support, additional language support, delivering training and education to healthcare professionals and reviewing the local support landscape to maximise the impact of collaboration and cross-sector working. Opportunities to improve the Health Access Card were also described, and these included providing translated versions and exploring the possibility of developing an accompanying digital resource.

SUBMITTER: Moffat M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9859311 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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A Qualitative Evaluation of a <i>Health Access Card</i> for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in a City in Northern England.

Moffat Malcolm M Nicholson Suzanne S Darke Joanne J Brown Melissa M Minto Stephen S Sowden Sarah S Rankin Judith J

International journal of environmental research and public health 20230112 2

Refugees and asylum seekers residing in the UK face multiple barriers to accessing healthcare. A <i>Health Access Card</i> information resource was launched in Newcastle upon Tyne in 2019 by Newcastle City Council, intended to guide refugees and asylum seekers living in the city, and the professional organisations that support them, to appropriate healthcare services provided locally. The aim of this qualitative evaluation was to explore service user and professional experiences of healthcare ac ...[more]

PMID: 36674184

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Project description:BackgroundSince 2010 there has been a growing population of refugees and asylum seekers in Latin America. This study sought to investigate the perceived experiences and healthcare needs of refugees and asylum seekers of Latin American origin in Chile in order to identify main barriers to healthcare and provide guidance on allied challenges for the public healthcare system.MethodsDescriptive qualitative case study with semi-structured interviews applied to refugees and asylum seekers (n = 8), healthcare workers (n = 4), and members of Non-Governmental Organizations and religious foundations focused on working with refugees and asylum seekers in Chile (n = 2).ResultsAlthough Chilean law guarantees access to all levels of healthcare for the international migrant population, the specific healthcare needs of refugees and asylum seekers were not adequately covered. Primary care and mental healthcare were the most required types of service for participants, yet they appeared to be the most difficult to access. Difficulties in social integration -including access to healthcare, housing, and education- upon arrival and lengthy waiting times for legal status of refugees also presented great barriers to effective healthcare provision and wellbeing. Healthcare workers and members of organizations indicated the need for more information about refugee and asylum-seeking populations, their rights and conditions, as well as more effective and tailored healthcare interventions for them, especially for emergency mental healthcare situations.ConclusionsAll participants perceived that there was disinformation among institutional actors regarding the healthcare needs of refugees and asylum seekers in Chile. They also perceived that there were barriers to access to primary care and mental healthcare, which might lead to overuse of emergency services. This study highlights a sense of urgency to protect the social and healthcare needs of refugees and asylum seekers in Latin America.

Project description:BackgroundMore than 120,000 refugees and asylum seekers are currently living in Switzerland. The prevalence of mental disorders among this population is significantly higher than that in the general population. While effective treatment options and cross-cultural, specialized treatment centers exist, they tend to be overloaded by their target populations. General outpatient primary health care providers might be able to compensate for the lack of specialized treatment slots. To date, however, it is unknown how often and under what conditions (e.g., length of waiting lists) refugees and asylum seekers are treated outside of specialized centers and whether there are barriers that prevent providers in outpatient settings from treating more patients in this subgroup. The present study aimed to assess the challenges and barriers faced by psychiatrists and psychotherapists working in outpatient settings in Switzerland in treating refugees and asylum seekers to determine the potential capacity of this group to provide mental health care.MethodsAn online survey was conducted during the winter of 2017/2018. The survey was constructed in three official languages and took 10-15 min to complete. Spearman's correlations, Mann-Whitney U-Tests, and Chi-squared tests were conducted to analyze the data.ResultsEight hundred and sixty-seven (N = 867) psychotherapists and psychiatrists working in outpatient settings completed the survey: 43% of them reported having treated between 1 and 9 refugees or asylum seekers in the past 12 months, and a further 13% reported treating 10 or more. Interpreters were used for almost every other patient with a refugee or asylum-seeker background. At the same time, the funding of interpreters, as well as the funding of treatment in general, were reported to be the biggest hurdles to treating more refugees and asylum seekers.ConclusionsGiven the low number of patients rejected for capacity reasons (between 2 and 5%) and the median waiting times for the admission of new patients ranging between 2 and 3 weeks, outpatient primary mental health care providers might treat more refugees and asylum seekers and relieve specialized treatment centers. However, barriers such as lack of funding of interpreters seem to hinder them. Appropriate steps by the authorities are needed to improve the current situation.

Project description:IntroductionAccess to essential medicines is a critical element of health systems and an important measure of their performance. Migrants may face barriers in accessing healthcare, including essential medicines, throughout the migration cycle, which includes the stages of departure from home or residence countries, transit through non-European or European countries, reception and settlement in a country in Europe and deportation. We aim to provide an overview of research and grey literature concerning access to essential medicines for asylum seekers, refugees and undocumented migrants in or heading to Europe (European Union, European Economic Area, Switzerland and the UK).MethodsTo delineate and conceptualise access to medicines, we considered the definition of the Lancet Commission on Essential Medicines and the Pharmaceutical Management framework. These frameworks were combined to guide several critical steps in our review, including defining the search terms, data extraction, data analyses and reporting. Relevant studies and reports were identified through searches in bibliographic and grey literature databases.ResultsOut of 5760 studies and 66 grey literature reports, 108 met the inclusion criteria, with 72 focusing on medicine access. Overall, medicine use and medicine expenditure were found to be lower in migrant populations compared with the host population in many European countries. Although many studies focused on the use of infectious disease and psychotropic medicines, the most frequently used medicines by migrants were analgesics, hypertension and diabetes medicines. Determinants of medicine access were legal restrictions, language and transit times, which all contributed to interruption of and inequities in access to medicines among this population. This scoping review also indicated significant gaps in the literature regarding the evidence on access to medicine at different stages of the migration cycle, specifically in departure, transit and deportation stages.ConclusionOverall, our findings highlighted significant unmet medicine needs among migrants in or on the way to Europe and access disparities attributable to various interconnected barriers. Urgent access is needed to address such inequities, particularly legal barriers, including registration of certain medicines required for treatment. Future research should prioritise investigating medicine access during departure, transit and deportation stages. Policy discussions around migrants' access to medicines should be centred on framing healthcare as a fundamental right.

Dataset Information

A Qualitative Evaluation of a Health Access Card for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in a City in Northern England.

Publications

A Qualitative Evaluation of a <i>Health Access Card</i> for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in a City in Northern England.

Similar Datasets

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