Health status of female Moldovan migrants to Italy by health literacy level and age group: a descriptive study
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
Health status of female Moldovan migrants to Italy by health literacy level and age group: a descriptive study Francesca Alice Vianello1, Federica Zaccagnini1, Carlo Pinato2, Pietro Maculan3 and Alessandra Buja3,4*
Abstract Background: Migration flows from Eastern Europe to Italy have been large and continue to grow. The purpose of this study was to examine the health status of a population of Moldovan migrant women, and their access to health care services in northern Italy, by age group and health literacy level. Methods: We administered an ad-hoc questionnaire to adult Moldovan women. A bivariate analysis was conducted to test the association between health literacy and age groups with other variables (lifestyles, symptoms and diseases, access to health services). A stepwise logistic regression analysis was run to test the association between access to primary care and health literacy. Moreover, the study compare Moldovan women data with a sample of Italian women of the same age range living in North-Eastern region. Results: Our sample included 170 Moldovan women (aged 46.5 ± 12.3) in five occupational categories: home care workers (28.2%); cleaners (27.1%); health care workers (5.9%); other occupations (28.8%); and unemployed (10%). Active smokers were twice as prevalent among the women with a low health literacy. Health literacy level also determined access to primary healthcare services. For all age groups, the Moldovan sample reported a higher prevalence of allergies, lumbar disorders and depression than the Italian controls. Conclusions: The reported prevalence of some diseases was higher among Moldovan migrant women than among Italian resident women. Health literacy was associated with the migrant women’s lifestyle and the use of primary health care services, as previously seen for the autochthonous population. Keywords: Health literacy, Migrant workers, Moldovan women, Migrant women, Primary health care services, Health status
* Correspondence: [email protected] 3 Department of Cardiological, Thoracic and Vascular Sciences, and Public Health, University of Padua, Via Loredan 18, 35128 Padova, Italy 4 Laboratory for Assessing Health Care Services and Health Promotion, Hygiene and Public Health Unit, Dept. of Cardiological, Thoracic and Vascular Sciences, and Public Health, University of Padova, Via Loredan, 18, 35131 Padova, Italy Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © The Author(s). 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not in
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