Pottie Kevin, Ng Edward, Spitzer Denise, Mohammed Alia, Glazier Richard
Institute of Population Health, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON.
Can J Public Health. 2008 Nov-Dec;99(6):505-10. doi: 10.1007/BF03403786.
Most immigrants to Canada now come from Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean and Africa, where cultures and languages often differ significantly from the Canadian context. Subgroups of immigrants experience disparities in health. Inability to communicate in an official language in Canada may be a marker of risk for poor health due to both pre- and post-migration factors. We aimed to study the relationship between language proficiency and self-reported health.
We conducted a cross-sectional analysis of the first two surveys of the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (2001, 2003), a population-based cohort study of new immigrants to Canada. Specifically, we used logistic regression analyses to examine the relationship between self-reported health and language proficiency by sex, controlling for a range of health determinants at 6 months (wave 1) and 2 years (wave 2) after arrival.
After controlling for covariates (age, sex, education, region of birth, immigrant class, job satisfaction, access to health care), analysis of the wave 1 survey showed that poor proficiency in English or French is significantly related to the self-reported poor health (OR=2.0, p<0.01). And this relationship was consistent in the wave 2 survey (OR=1.9, p<0.01). We also found that this statistically significant association between poor language proficiency and self-reported health holds only for women (wave 1 survey OR=2.6, p <0.01, wave 2 survey OR=2.2, p<0.01), not for men.
The association between poor language proficiency and poor self-reported health, and particularly its significantly greater impact on women, has implications for language training, health care and social services, and health information.
现在大多数移民到加拿大的人来自亚洲、中东、加勒比地区和非洲，这些地区的文化和语言往往与加拿大的情况有很大差异。移民亚群体在健康方面存在差异。在加拿大无法用官方语言进行交流可能是由于移民前和移民后因素导致健康不佳风险的一个标志。我们旨在研究语言能力与自我报告的健康之间的关系。
我们对加拿大移民纵向调查（2001年、2003年）的前两次调查进行了横断面分析，这是一项针对加拿大新移民的基于人群的队列研究。具体而言，我们使用逻辑回归分析，按性别检验自我报告的健康与语言能力之间的关系，并在抵达后的6个月（第1波）和2年（第2波）控制一系列健康决定因素。
在控制协变量（年龄、性别、教育程度、出生地区、移民类别、工作满意度、获得医疗保健的机会）后，对第1波调查的分析表明，英语或法语能力差与自我报告的健康状况不佳显著相关（OR = 2.0，p < 0.01）。并且这种关系在第2波调查中是一致的（OR = 1.9，p < 0.01）。我们还发现，语言能力差与自我报告的健康之间的这种统计学显著关联仅适用于女性（第1波调查OR = 2.6，p < 0.01，第2波调查OR = 2.2，p < 0.01），不适用于男性。
语言能力差与自我报告的健康状况不佳之间的关联，尤其是其对女性的显著更大影响，对语言培训、医疗保健和社会服务以及健康信息具有启示意义。
