Summary Of Acculturation Is Bad For Our Health By Juana Mora

Immigrants take up a decent portion of the population in the united stated. People from near and far flock over to American to try to achieve the American dream. This basically means they are trying to obtain better opportunities found in the United States that cannot be acquired in their home countries. In the short film “Becoming American” we learn that the main reason why immigrants, especially Latinos go to American is to work to support their large families. Coming from a family immigrants, I know that concept family is everything and like the people in the film demonstrate important measures should be done to support your family. However one important fact that I didn’t know prior to seeing the film was the idea that most immigrants are quite healthy.

Public health workers from all spectrums can assist in proposed legislation and policies favoring the Latino community as well as increasing efforts for lifestyle changes leading to r4ducing risk factor such as obesity, hypertension and dietary choices. Public health programs will also look to create more strategies and interventions that promote, prolong and encourage a healthier lifestyle while living on a strained budget. In essence, acculturation and cultural lifestyle contributes to higher rates of diabetes among the Latino community.

The article Health Disparity and Structural Violence: How Fear Undermines Health Among Immigrants at Risk for Diabetes was extremely informative. The article identified “three dimensions of fear including (a) Cost; (b) Language,

The study itself discusses several “buffers” which might have prevented trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder. When coming to the United States, many Latinx immigrants have a support system waiting for them, whether that is family or friends. Others build a support system right away in places such as church. Therefore, Perreira takes into account parent living with a partner and church attendance as buffers. A support system contributed to the resilience of female immigrants who went through a traumatic experience. Consequently, they might not develop post-traumatic stress disorder or its symptoms.

This video episode of Unnatural Causes was concerned with how the health of newly arrived Mexican immigrants diminished as a function of them spending an increasing amount of time in America. It was initially pointed out that when they first arrived in this country, their overall health was better than most Americans, but within a generation, their health would deteriorate towards the norm in America due to the influence of inherent social pressures (Unnatural Causes, 2008). A couple of hypothetical reasons were then presented in order to explain why this might happen and then one of these was expounded upon for the majority of the video.

Key Concept 2: As discussed by de Castro et al. economic factors, social factors, work-related factors all have a vital role in determining the health status of Latino day laborers. They are forced to endure the low paying wages of strenuous work that weakens the body and exposes them to disease. Discrimination also

Mendez, Bauman and Guillory (2012) found that Mexican American students bullied Mexican immigrant students in a predominantly Hispanic high school. Mexican American students consistently bullied Mexican Immigrant students on language and feelings of superiority on behalf of the Mexican American students.

The article, “Health Disparity and structural violence: How fear undermines health among immigrants at risk for Diabetes” describes how an individual approaches day to day living and health of which fear is a dominant feature. The writer of this article pointed out various dimensions of fear based on data collection with a Hispanic immigrant population in New Mexico. These dimensions are cost, language, discrimination, immigration status and cultural disconnect. According to Galting, 1969, structural violence refers to some social structure or institution that harm people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs. According to Farmer, et al (2006), these dynamics are structural because they are embedded in the political and social world and violent because they cause injury.

Review of the literature reveals that use of the term "healthy immigrant effect" is quite vague. On the one hand, some studies refer to immigrants as a homogeneous population group, arguing that on average immigrants are in relatively better health on arrival than the native population. On the other hand, empirical evidence has documented this advantage only for certain racial and ethnic subgroups of immigrants (e.g., Johnson & Hayes, 2004; Singh & Miller, 2004; Huh, Prause, & Dooley, 2008). For example, findings concerning the initial health advantage of immigrants comparatively to their native born counterparts (of the same ethnic origin) are less consistent for Asian than for Hispanics (e.g., Huh et al., 2008). Some studies have reported

Neonatal and perinatal health outcomes will influencing the overall future health of an individual. Indeed, many illnesses and disorders originate from prenatal and early infancy abnormal developments. Preterm-birth and low-birth weight have been positively correlated with adverse health outcomes ranging from childhood to the adult life of an individual. Thus, it is essential for public health professionals to understand not only the biological factors influencing birth timing and weight, but also the psychosocial dynamics which may impact those outcomes. For years, many scientists have observed what is called the ‘migrant paradox’. The migrant paradox designates a situation where first generation immigrants who are almost systematically socio-economically disadvantaged exhibit better health outcomes as the native-born population. There could be multiple causes to this migrant paradox. In this paper, I will attempt to evaluate multiple studies aimed at tackling the link between perinatal and neonatal health outcomes and migrant status. Those papers have been published within the past 15 years, with the notable exception of Rumbault’s 1997 paper on assimilation. In this article, the American sociologists suggests that assimilation does not always carry out positive consequences on the health of immigrants. Indeed, some elements of the habitus of the native-born population may have adverse effects on health outcomes. Thus, while assimilating, the immigrants lose negative and

Similarly, feeding styles and evening family meals among current immigrants in the US have higher levels of stress on acculturative process. In combination with the lack of social support, mothers find it hard to be engaged in household routines such as family meals. Children of current immigrant women are more motivated to be engaged in certain “American” eating habits (e.g., eating in front of the TV, not having a scheduled meal time), which were unusual back in their home country, pressuring their mothers (Tovar et al. 2013). Likewise, Narayan et al. (2010) demonstrated that lifestyle characteristics include smoking status, alcohol drinking status, and physical activity affect overweight and increases diabetes prevalence among US immigrants.

Immigrants plays a major role in the growth of the population of the United States, (US) and it is estimated that about 82% 0f the population increase between 2005 and 2050 will be attributed to immigrants and their offspring (Passel & Cohn, 2008, as cited in Turk & Fapohunda, 2015). The African immigrant population is rapidly increasing with every passing day, in fact, it has doubled in size between 2000 and 2010; yet a large extent of the health and wellness of the African immigrant population remain unexplored (Venters & Gany, 201, as cited in Turk & Fapohunda, 2015). This monographic trends indicate a crucial need to learn about African immigrant’s beliefs and lifestyle behaviors that may impact health. According to the researchers,

Birth outcomes not only predict immigrant health outcomes, they also may determine factors affecting health behaviors of foreign-born immigrants and U.S.-born Americans. Research articles on immigrant infants’ health indicate despite parents’ ethnicity, newborns from foreign-born immigrant mothers have lower rates of low birth weight and fewer preterm births than newborns from U.S.- born mothers. Reducing preterm (<2500g) births are important for perinatal health because preterm and low birth weight put babies at a higher risk of perinatal morbidity and mortality (Urquia, Frank & Glazier 2010). Low birth weight is associated with higher risks of congenital anomalies, neurodevelopmental and behavioral disorders, and generally poorer child health

There is a lack of studies that investigate the eating pathology among Latinas even though there is evidence that a binge eating component (i.e. binge eating disorder, bulimia nervosa) is more prevalent among Latinas compared with other races. For those who are engaged in binge eating tend to have unrealistic high expectations for themselves, which often are difficult to achieve. When the individual, in this case a Latina, has fallen short of these high expectations, they experience negative affect from which she is motivated to binge eat. Dr. Neyland proposed that stressful experiences across three domains of interest: individual, family, and environment. The independent variable of acculturative stress (individual level) is defined as the stress and reduction in health status that one experiences while going under the process of adapting to a different culture. Then for family, there is family disconnection, which is not unique to Latinas but there is a strong emphasis that Latinas place on family relationships. They value it so much that if they experience family disconnection, they would likely be experienced as failure to meet cultural standards. And lastly, there is the environmental factor which is discrimination. Among Latina/os, there is a large amount of reports of discrimination which is believed to have impacted many to have lower self-esteem and a significantly slower growth in self-esteem over time. Neyland hypothesized that

Health Outcome: Recent immigrants enjoyed many health advantages compared to long term Immigrant and native born in many aspects like overall health status and chronic diseases. The immigrant women have greater life expectancy as compared to Canadian born women. [Ontario Immigrant Status Report Chen and Willkins and NG (1996)] and had longer lives without disability and dependency [Chen and NG and Willkins (1996)]. This is further evidenced by findings based on the rate of affected in chronic illness for life threatening issues and mobility impairment. Though there is a lot of research literature evidencing the reduction of the health advantages of immigrants over time, but it can be set as normalizing the health effect to that of the Canadian context. This normalizing effect is due to several factors like diet and physical activity which immigrant changes to that of Canadians and thereby increasing the chances of Canadian chronic diseases. Other factors can be delayed employment and inadequate income. Immigrant women being a sub- population of this group faces almost similar issues, but also more aggravated ones. With the increased of feminized immigration in recent years. At present,