Defending our immigrant communities isn’t just the suitable factor to do; it’s an crucial public well being difficulty.
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If you’re a New Yorker, chances are high you’re an immigrant or a descendant of 1. Almost 40% of all Individuals can hint at the least certainly one of their ancestors again to New York Metropolis.
Greater than a 3rd of New Yorkers weren’t born within the U.S. Almost half of our important staff – nurses, supply drivers, grocery retailer clerks – had been born outdoors america. Immigrants had been on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic serving their fellow New Yorkers, and it is very important acknowledge how our metropolis has been constructed on a era of immigrants, contributing to its soul, economic system, and resilience.
A latest New York Metropolis Well being Division report, The Well being of Immigrants in New York Metropolis, reveals some encouraging developments on the well being of immigrants. Immigrants in New York Metropolis have the next life expectancy (83.5 years) in comparison with US-born residents (79.9 years). Immigrant populations, notably ladies, exhibit decrease smoking charges than U.S.-born New Yorkers. Immigrants play a vital position in New York Metropolis’s well being care system, comprising 47% of the workforce in well being care practitioner and technical occupations.
On the similar time, immigrant New Yorkers face boundaries to accessing well being care. In New York Metropolis, 15% of immigrant adults lack medical health insurance, practically double the speed amongst U.S.-born residents. And whereas immigrant New Yorkers have general larger life expectancy, the report additionally highlights some well being inequities.
Immigrants with despair are much less prone to obtain psychological well being remedy in comparison with U.S.-born residents. Continual ailments like diabetes and hypertension disproportionately have an effect on sure immigrant teams, equivalent to these from Bangladesh and the Caribbean. And the pandemic laid naked the devastating impression of systemic inequities, with immigrant staff in important sectors going through disproportionately excessive COVID-19 mortality charges.
Immigrant communities in New York Metropolis face a spread of challenges, from language boundaries to office points, from restricted entry to healthcare and schooling, to problem navigating the authorized system.
Defending our immigrant communities isn’t just the suitable factor to do; it’s an crucial public well being difficulty. Lack of entry to take care of a few of us interprets to delayed care, preventable sicknesses, and in the end, poorer well being outcomes for us all.
To help the well being of immigrant New Yorkers — and the well being of our whole metropolis — we should proceed to advance the next interventions with companions at each stage of presidency and all sectors. We have to scale back language and cultural boundaries to satisfy primary wants for housing, schooling, and well being care, and have interaction immigrant communities to share assets about obtainable providers and their rights.
We should additionally get rid of discriminatory eligibility necessities that stop New Yorkers from accessing wanted public advantages and packages due to their immigration standing, in addition to and focus assets of numerous establishments to the teams most in want.
The belief and dignity of immigrant communities is important to a protected and wholesome New York Metropolis. But we all know that well being is undermined if persons are afraid to go to a health care provider. New York Metropolis’s legal guidelines are designed for everybody to have the ability to name 911, go to the emergency room, entry major care, or ship their youngsters to highschool with out concern.
Security and human dignity are core ideas that information the work of our metropolis’s well being facilities and hospitals. NYC Well being + Hospitals runs town’s 11 public hospitals, 5 nursing houses, and neighborhood Gotham Well being Facilities in each borough. The New York Metropolis Well being Division operates eight sexual well being, immunization, and tuberculosis clinics throughout town and three Neighborhood Well being Motion Facilities — in excessive precedence areas in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Harlem — that provide providers together with childbirth schooling, overdose prevention coaching, and diabetes self-management lessons.
Our well being facilities and hospitals have a protracted and proud historical past of caring for everybody. No exceptions.
New York Metropolis respects sufferers’ privateness. When anybody visits our well being care services, sharing details about immigration standing will not be required to obtain care.
New York Metropolis invests over $60 million in authorized providers to help immigrant New Yorkers, probably the most in any municipality within the nation. Immigrant New Yorkers can name the Mayor’s Workplace of Immigrant Affairs Immigration Authorized Hotline at 800-354-0365 for extra info.
As commissioners that care deeply about individuals, we’re dedicated to making sure all New Yorkers together with immigrants know that in a second of heightened concern and nervousness, you matter. Immigrants have been and proceed to be key to town’s progress, success, and vibrant vitality.
Investing within the well being and well-being of immigrant New Yorkers means a extra simply and more healthy metropolis for all of us.
Dr. Michelle Morse is the appearing NYC Well being commissioner; Manuel Castro is commissioner of the Mayor’s Workplace of Immigrant Affairs.
