Policy Approaches to Achieve Health Equity for Immigrant Children

Abstract

In this paper, we aim to make comprehensive policy recommendations to support children in immigrant families, including access to permanent immigration status, culturally responsive mental health care services, creating safe spaces in settings that serve children and families, centering the needs of children in the immigration system, expanding immigrant access to public programs, and ensuring robust research on the importance of such policies. Immigrant children face unique challenges in achieving adequate health care across many conditions and circumstances, driven by policy decisions that can be addressed. Opportunities exist for those working to improve the health of children to educate policymakers and present additional research demonstrating the value of these policy changes.

Keywords: health equity; immigrant health; immigrant mental health; pediatric health access; public benefits access.