- Title
- Refugee policy implications of U.S. immigration medical screenings: a new era of inadmissibility on health-related grounds
- Creator
- Hong, Mi-Kyung; Varghese, Reshma E.; Jindal, Charulata; Efird, Jimmy T.
- Relation
- International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health Vol. 14, Issue 10
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph14101107
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2017
- Description
- Refugees frequently face extended delays in their efforts to enter the United States (U.S.) and those who are successful, in many cases, encounter overwhelming obstacles, inadequate resources, and a complex system of legal barriers. Travel restrictions based on equivocal health concerns and a drop in refugee admittance ceilings have complicated the situation. The authors retrieved and analyzed peer-reviewed journal articles, government agency press releases, media postings, epidemiologic factsheets, and relevant lay publications to critically assess U.S. policy regarding refugee resettlement based on health-related grounds. While refugees arguably exhibit an increased incidence of measles and tuberculosis compared with the U.S. population, the legitimacy of the medical examination will be undermined if other diseases that are endemic to refugee populations, yet currently deemed admissible, are used to restrict refugees from entering the U.S. This paper addressees the historic refugee policy of the U.S. and its consequent effect on the health of this vulnerable population. The needs of refugees should be carefully considered in the context of increased disease burden and the associated health care challenges of the country as a whole.
- Subject
- HIV; immigration; measles; populism; refugee health; rule-making; tuberculosis
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1350852
- Identifier
- uon:30618
- Identifier
- ISSN:1661-7827
- Rights
- © 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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Goal 3: Good Health and Well-Being
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