The health of the California region bordering Mexico

Healthy Border (HB) 2010 is the health promotion and disease prevention agenda through the year 2010 of the United States-Mexico Border Health Commission (BHC). On the United States side, it draws from the Healthy People (HP) 2010 objectives, identifying those most important and relevant for the border. The BHC has harmonized the list of objectives from both countries into a set of 19 that will be monitored and addressed in a collaborative manner. HB provides a framework for describing the border region's health and comparing with others. For this report, available data were collected for the HB indicators for San Diego and Imperial counties, and for California. Data on Latino populations were considered a proxy for Mexican-Americans and people of Mexican origin in California, because more specific data are not available. Results are presented on the 14 indicators for which the data were most complete. Those of most concern include access to health care and tuberculosis in both counties, plus motor vehicle crash injury deaths and asthma hospitalizations in Imperial. These issues should be given priority attention. Conversely, the region's and Latinos' experience with breast cancer mortality and infant mortality is favorable. Recommendations include binational collaborations in assessing and improving the health of our border communities.