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Variation in disease in children according to immigrant background
Marte Kjøllesdal1, Angela S Labberton1, Anne Reneflot2
1Division of Health Services, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway.
Insights
Children of immigrants in Norway show varied health profiles compared to non-immigrant children. While some conditions were more prevalent, overall health was not worse, indicating specific health needs for immigrant children.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Health
- Public Health
- Epidemiology
Background:
- A significant and increasing proportion of European births are to immigrant parents.
- Understanding the health of these children is crucial for public health planning and medical interventions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare diagnoses in secondary and tertiary healthcare between Norwegian-born children with and without immigrant backgrounds.
- To identify specific health disparities in pediatric immigrant populations.
Main Methods:
- Linked data from Norwegian health and population registries (2008-2018) for over 1 million children (0-10 years).
- Analyzed diagnostic categories in physical health (infections, non-infectious medical, non-infectious neurological conditions).
- Used Cox regression to assess hazard ratios for diagnoses by immigrant background, adjusted for sex and birth year.
Main Results:
- Children of immigrants had higher risks for certain infections, obesity, nutritional disorders, skin, blood, and genital diseases.
- Children of African immigrants showed increased risks for cerebral palsy, cerebrovascular diseases, and epilepsy.
- Conversely, immigrant children had lower risks for acute lower respiratory infections, musculoskeletal and central nervous system infections, circulatory diseases, hearing impairment, and headaches.
Conclusions:
- Children of immigrants do not exhibit overall poorer health than non-immigrant children.
- However, there are distinct variations in the distribution of health conditions among different groups of immigrant children.
Background:
A growing proportion of children born in Europe are born to immigrant parents. Knowledge about their health is essential for preventive and curative medicine and health services planning.
Objective:
To investigate differences in diagnoses given in secondary and tertiary healthcare between Norwegian-born children to immigrant and non-immigrant parents.
Methods:
Data from the Medical Birth Registry of Norway, the Norwegian Patient Registry and Statistics Norway were linked by the national personal identification number. The study population included children born in Norway aged 0-10 years between 2008 and 2018 (N=1,015,267). Diagnostic categories from three main domains of physical health, given in secondary or tertiary care; infections, non-infectious medical conditions and non-infectious neurological conditions were included from 2008 onwards. Hazards of diagnoses by immigrant background were assessed by Cox regressions adjusted for sex and birth year.
Results:
Children of immigrants generally had higher hazards than children with Norwegian background of some types of infections, obesity, nutrition-related disorders, skin diseases, blood disease and genital disease. Children of immigrants from Africa also had higher hazards of cerebral palsy, cerebrovascular diseases and epilepsy. Conversely, most groups of children of immigrants had lower hazards of acute lower respiratory tract infections, infections of the musculoskeletal system, infections of the central nervous system, diseases of the circulatory system, hearing impairment, immune system disorders, chronic lower respiratory disease and headache conditions.
Conclusions:
Children of immigrants did not present with overall worse health than children without immigrant background, but the distribution of health problems varied between groups.
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