Defending our immigrant communities isn’t just the suitable factor to do; it’s an crucial public well being challenge.
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In case you are a New Yorker, chances are high you’re an immigrant or a descendant of 1. Almost 40% of all Individuals can hint a minimum of 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 employees – nurses, supply drivers, grocery retailer clerks – have been born exterior america. Immigrants have 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 current New York Metropolis Well being Division report, The Well being of Immigrants in New York Metropolis, reveals some encouraging tendencies 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, significantly ladies, exhibit decrease smoking charges than U.S.-born New Yorkers. Immigrants play a vital function in New York Metropolis’s well being care system, comprising 47% of the workforce in well being care practitioner and technical occupations.
On the identical time, immigrant New Yorkers face obstacles to accessing well being care. In New York Metropolis, 15% of immigrant adults lack medical health insurance, almost double the speed amongst U.S.-born residents. And whereas immigrant New Yorkers have total greater life expectancy, the report additionally highlights some well being inequities.
Immigrants with melancholy are much less prone to obtain psychological well being remedy in comparison with U.S.-born residents. Power 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 employees in important sectors dealing with disproportionately excessive COVID-19 mortality charges.
Immigrant communities in New York Metropolis face a variety of challenges, from language obstacles to office points, from restricted entry to healthcare and training, to issue navigating the authorized system.
Defending our immigrant communities isn’t just the suitable factor to do; it’s an crucial public well being challenge. Lack of entry to take care of a few of us interprets to delayed care, preventable sicknesses, and finally, poorer well being outcomes for us all.
To assist the well being of immigrant New Yorkers — and the well being of our complete metropolis — we should proceed to advance the next interventions with companions at each stage of presidency and all sectors. We have to cut back language and cultural obstacles to satisfy primary wants for housing, training, and well being care, and have interaction immigrant communities to share assets about out there providers and their rights.
We should additionally get rid of discriminatory eligibility necessities that stop New Yorkers from accessing wanted public advantages and applications due to their immigration standing, in addition to and focus assets of various establishments to the teams most in want.
The belief and dignity of immigrant communities is important to a secure and wholesome New York Metropolis. But we all know that well being is undermined if individuals 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 children to high school with out worry.
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 the town’s 11 public hospitals, 5 nursing properties, 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 the town and three Neighborhood Well being Motion Facilities — in excessive precedence areas in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Harlem — that supply providers together with childbirth training, overdose prevention coaching, and diabetes self-management courses.
Our well being facilities and hospitals have an extended and proud historical past of caring for everybody. No exceptions.
New York Metropolis respects sufferers’ privateness. When anybody visits our well being care amenities, sharing details about immigration standing is just not required to obtain care.
New York Metropolis invests over $60 million in authorized providers to assist immigrant New Yorkers, essentially 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 worry and anxiousness, you matter. Immigrants have been and proceed to be key to the town’s development, success, and vibrant power.
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.
