HELLO JI!

WHY NEWCOMERS FACE ADVERSE HEALTH OUTCOMES

Socioeconomic circumstances and systemic racism have been linked to adverse birth outcomes. Image credit: KELLY SIKKEMA on Unsplash.

A large new study published in Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) provides a national portrait of birth and postnatal outcomes among immigrants to Canada.

It’s not a pretty picture.

Immigrants are diverse with unique lived experiences prior to immigration, reasons for immigration, and resettlement experiences. Most research combines all immigrants into a single population despite these differences. As almost one in four people in Canada are immigrants, understanding whether and how these differences affect health outcomes is important, say the authors.

In this study of almost eight million Canadian births over 25 years (1993-2017), researchers looked at differences in adverse birth and postnatal outcomes for immigrants in three categories – economic-class, family-class and refugees – and compared them with outcomes of Canadian-born parents. They found that babies born to immigrants were at increased risk of preterm birth, small for gestational age birth, and stillbirth, but were at lower risk of large for gestational age birth and infant death than babies born to Canadian-born parents. Economic-class immigrants were at lowest risk and refugees at highest risk for preterm birth and stillbirth.

Socioeconomic circumstances and systemic racism have been linked to adverse birth outcomes.

Immigrants come to Canada seeking new opportunities, and prime among them are better health and education for their children. But shockingly, not only are there birth inequities among immigrants, now we learn of the need for a national school food program.

In the global south, breakfast programs are common at schools, sometimes providing the only nutrition for the day to students who come from underprivileged families.

In our early years in Canada, when I first heard of breakfast programs in some schools, I was surprised and saddened to learn of children here arriving at school hungry.

Now, decades later, prime minister Justin Trudeau has announced a new National School Food Program because nearly one in four children in Canada do not get enough food. “The National School Food Program will take pressure off of families, invest directly in the future of our kids, and make sure they’re able to reach their full potential – feeling healthy and happy,” he said. Paired with information about 650,000 children having been lifted out of poverty since 2015 and Canada’s child poverty rate having fallen by more than half, it may appear as pre-election candy to the cynical. But with an investment of a billion dollars over five years, the program will launch with a target of providing meals to 400,000 more kids every year, beyond those served by existing school food programs.

Parents urge their kids to finish everything on their plate by reminding them of hungry children in some remote part of the world. Sadly, those hungry children might well be in your child’s class.

Shagorika Easwar