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Migrants' health merits checkup
Mexico, U.S. experts target better care on both sides of border

By Oscar Avila
Tribune staff reporter
Published October 13, 2005


Immigrants who cross back and forth between Mexico and the United States create new medical demands on both sides of the border, compelling the two countries to jointly tackle obesity, AIDS and other medical issues, experts said Wednesday.

About 300 public health officials, doctors, researchers and elected officials gathered at the Hyatt Regency Chicago to devise binational strategies for a population that is disproportionately vulnerable to disease, and often without health insurance.

Participants warned that the sheer size of the Mexican population in the U.S. means that health problems could strain the resources of medical providers, overburden the budgets of health departments and expose more people to communicable diseases and other public-health risks.

The Mexican and U.S. governments have been collaborating on health policy along the border for about five years, but this week's Chicago conference is the first outside a border state.

The conference drew top officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Mexican Ministry of Health and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

"When immigrants move, they change their culture, their society, their customs," said Miguel Angel Gonzalez, executive director of a research center with Mexico's National Institute of Public Health. "But the vulnerabilities they confront don't change."

Chicago has emerged as the nation's second-largest Mexican community. Disturbing health-care trends have been noted in Mexican nationals around the country, participants said.

Nearly 40 percent of Mexicans under 65 have no health insurance, compared with 16 percent of non-Hispanic whites. At the same time, Mexicans suffer from higher rates of diabetes and chronic disease.

Participants floated ambitious proposals, such as a binational health insurance plan, as well as basic strategies, such as a computer network that would transmit medical files from Mexican doctors to their U.S. counterparts.

Francisco Cisneros, executive director of the Pilsen-Little Village Community Mental Health Center and a conference organizer, said Mexico has to realize that its people are facing health obstacles.

Cisneros suggested that Mexican officials invite U.S. health practitioners to study and work there so they could better understand the culture.

Mexican officials also could play a role in health education in the United States, especially because undocumented immigrants might be reluctant to turn to U.S. government agencies, Cisneros said.

The conference was supplemented by a week of workshops on diabetes, domestic violence and other topics in primarily Hispanic neighborhoods.

Conference participants said the joint approach was especially necessary in battling HIV and AIDS. Health officials said many Mexican men immigrate alone to the United States and engage in unsafe sex with prostitutes or others. Many then bring HIV back to their wives in their Mexican hometowns.

Monica Ochoa-Delgado, community relations manager for the Chicago Department of Public Health, said everyone has a stake in improving the health of Mexican nationals. If Mexican parents don't have information about vaccinating their child, for example, that lack of care could affect all the child's classmates.

"If I am an immigrant and I get sick and I don't have insurance, it doesn't matter that you are a citizen with insurance," she said. "We all live together. We all need to be healthy."