[Prevention among migrants: Participation, migrant sensitive strategies and programme characteristics]

Health promotion and prevention can contribute to a long, healthy life in populations both with and without migrant background. This paper provides an overview on migrant participation in prevention programmes in Germany. Furthermore, we describe migrant sensitive prevention strategies and characteristics of prevention programmes for migrants in Germany. With regard to participation in prevention programmes, lower vaccination rates are found among children and adolescents who migrated to Germany after birth. Among adults with a migrant background, we found lower participation in general health check-ups, oral health check-ups, cancer screening programs and influenza vaccination. Migrant sensitive prevention strategies address the visual style of the material, a target group specific risk communication, language requirements, a systematic involvement of the target group, and the recognition of deeply rooted sociocultural practices and beliefs. On analyzing a large database on prevention programs in Germany, we found only a few programmes that were exclusively targeted to migrant groups (0.6%). In 16.6% of the programs migrants were addressed as the target group among others. Compared to general population programs, programs for migrants were more often exclusively directed towards girls or women. Moreover, programs for migrants used community-based approaches more often and addressed different age groups. Although information on migrant participation in prevention programs and utilization of migrant sensitive strategies is still incomplete, we can assume that there is a need for diversity-oriented, migrant sensitive prevention.