Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Jan 12;20(2):1429.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph20021429.

A Qualitative Evaluation of a Health Access Card for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in a City in Northern England

Malcolm Moffat  1 , Suzanne Nicholson  2 , Joanne Darke  3 , Melissa Brown  1 , Stephen Minto  4 , Sarah Sowden  1 , Judith Rankin  1
Affiliations

A Qualitative Evaluation of a Health Access Card for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in a City in Northern England

Malcolm Moffat et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

Refugees and asylum seekers residing in the UK face multiple barriers to accessing healthcare. A Health Access Card information resource was launched in Newcastle upon Tyne in 2019 by Newcastle City Council, intended to guide refugees and asylum seekers living in the city, and the professional organisations that support them, to appropriate healthcare services provided locally. The aim of this qualitative evaluation was to explore service user and professional experiences of healthcare access and utilisation in Newcastle and perspectives on the Health Access Card. Eleven semi-structured interviews took place between February 2020 and March 2021. Participants provided diverse and compelling accounts of healthcare experiences and described cultural, financial and institutional barriers to care. Opportunities to improve healthcare access for these population groups included offering more bespoke support, additional language support, delivering training and education to healthcare professionals and reviewing the local support landscape to maximise the impact of collaboration and cross-sector working. Opportunities to improve the Health Access Card were also described, and these included providing translated versions and exploring the possibility of developing an accompanying digital resource.

Keywords: asylum seeker; health access; health information; intervention; refugee.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Themes and subthemes from interviews with service users and professionals around the Health Access Card.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) [(accessed on 23 October 2022)]. Available online: www.unhcr.org/uk/figures-at-a-glance.html.
    1. UNHCR. [(accessed on 23 October 2022)]. Available online: www.unhcr.org/refugees.html.
    1. UNHCR. [(accessed on 23 October 2022)]. Available online: www.unhcr.org/asylum-seekers.html.
    1. Home Office (UK Government) [(accessed on 23 October 2022)]; Available online: www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-statistics-year-ending-dece....
    1. Luiking M.L., Heckemann B., Ali P., Dekker-van Doorn C., Ghosh S., Kydd A., Watson R., Patel H. Migrants’ Healthcare Experience: A Meta-Ethnography Review of the Literature. J. Nurs. Scholarsh. 2019;51:58–67. doi: 10.1111/jnu.12442. - DOI - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources