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Diagnoses given in specialist health care to Norwegian-born children with one immigrant parent. A register-based
Marte K R Kjøllesdal1, Ylva Helland2, Thor Indseth2
1Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Department of Public Health Science, Ås, Norway.
Insights
Children with one immigrant parent show similar overall health to Norwegian children. However, those with an immigrant mother had fewer diagnoses, suggesting potential underutilization of health services.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Health
- Public Health
- Sociomedical Sciences
Background:
- Assessing child health disparities is crucial for equitable healthcare.
- Understanding health outcomes for children with immigrant parents informs public health policy.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare the risk of somatic health diagnoses in specialist care for children with one immigrant parent versus children of Norwegian background.
- To investigate potential differences in healthcare utilization based on parental immigrant status.
Main Methods:
- Linked data from Norwegian health and population registries (2008-2018).
- Included children aged 0-10 years with two Norwegian-born or one Norwegian-born and one immigrant parent.
- Used Cox regression to assess hazard ratios for diagnoses, adjusting for demographic and socioeconomic factors.
Main Results:
- Children with an immigrant mother had lower hazards for overall somatic conditions, infections, non-infectious conditions, and neurological conditions.
- Results varied by specific diagnoses and parental origin; socioeconomic adjustments had minimal impact.
- No overall worse health outcomes were observed for children with one immigrant parent.
Conclusions:
- Children with one immigrant parent do not exhibit worse overall health compared to children of Norwegian background.
- Lower diagnosis rates in children with an immigrant mother may indicate underutilization of specialist healthcare services.
- Further research is needed to explore barriers to healthcare access and utilization in this population.
Objective:
To compare the risk of receiving diagnoses of somatic health problems in specialist health care among Norwegian-born children with one immigrant parent to children of Norwegian background.
Methods:
Data from Medical Birth Registry of Norway, Norwegian Patient Registry and Statistics Norway were linked. All children born in Norway to two Norwegian-born parents or to one Norwegian-born parent and one immigrant parent, aged 0-10 years between 2008 and 2018 were included. Diagnostic categories of 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, and additionally for parental education and household income.
Results:
Compared with children with Norwegian background, children with an immigrant mother had lower hazards of receiving a diagnosis of any somatic condition (hazard ratio 0.97, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.95, 0.98), infections in total (hazard ratio 0.93, 95% CI 0.91, 0.95), total non-infectious medical conditions (hazard ratio 0.97, 95% CI 0.95, 0.98) and of any neurological condition (hazard ratio 0.89, 95% CI 0.86, 0.93). There were variations for individual diagnosis groups and by the immigrant parent being a mother or a father, and by parental region of origin. Adjustments for socioeconomic variables made negligible changes to estimates.
Conclusions:
Children of one immigrant parent do not have overall worse health than children with Norwegian background. Lower hazards of diagnoses of many conditions among those with an immigrant mother warrants further research into possible underutilization of services and barriers to use.
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