Meukens Loes, Aljadeeah Saleh
Department of Public Health, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, Flanders, Belgium.
F1000Res. 2025 Jul 8;14:171. doi: 10.12688/f1000research.160320.2. eCollection 2025.
Migration is a social determinant of health, and migrants often face health inequalities compared to host populations. Migrants are underrepresented in health research in many European countries, including Belgium, which is concerning. The World Health Organization (WHO) developed a comprehensive framework aimed at guiding research on migration and health within the WHO European Region. This study supports evidence-based policymaking among European member states by providing a foundational structure for examining various strategies and methodologies. The framework serves as a catalyst for discussion and critical analysis, contributing to the formulation of a global research agenda on migration and health under WHO's leadership. Additionally, it outlines key research priorities and offers strategic recommendations to enhance the understanding and response to health issues related to migration. One of these recommendations calls on researchers to "maximise the use of existing data from research and routinely collected data in health information systems".
The overarching aim of our study is to map available sources of datasets about access to and use of medicines among migrant populations, and test if and under which conditions they can be used in research, by taking the case of Flanders, Belgium.
This study will involve conducting a focused review to map datasets used for reporting access to and use of medicines among migrants, followed by a qualitative study with key informants; a structured analysis of ethical and legal challenges to be addressed when using the datasets we identified for research; and content description and evaluation of the different identified datasets.
We assert that the results of our study will help presenting the diverse sources of data about medicines access or use among migrant populations. They will be also used to provide recommendations about enhancing the possibilities of retrieving, and using data, including recommendations for (legal, ethical, methodological) risk mitigation for retrieving and using these data.
移民是健康的社会决定因素，与东道国人口相比，移民往往面临健康不平等问题。在包括比利时在内的许多欧洲国家，移民在健康研究中的代表性不足，这令人担忧。世界卫生组织（WHO）制定了一个全面框架，旨在指导世卫组织欧洲区域内关于移民与健康的研究。本研究通过提供一个基础结构来审视各种战略和方法，支持欧洲成员国基于证据的政策制定。该框架是讨论和批判性分析的催化剂，有助于在世卫组织的领导下制定关于移民与健康的全球研究议程。此外，它概述了关键研究重点，并提供战略建议，以加强对与移民相关的健康问题的理解和应对。其中一项建议呼吁研究人员“最大限度地利用研究中的现有数据以及健康信息系统中常规收集的数据”。
我们研究的总体目标是绘制有关移民群体药品获取和使用情况的可用数据集来源，并以比利时弗拉芒地区为例，测试这些数据集是否以及在何种条件下可用于研究。
本研究将包括进行一次重点综述，以绘制用于报告移民药品获取和使用情况的数据集，随后对关键信息提供者进行定性研究；对使用我们确定用于研究的数据集时要解决的伦理和法律挑战进行结构化分析；以及对不同确定的数据集进行内容描述和评估。
我们断言，我们的研究结果将有助于展示有关移民群体药品获取或使用情况的多样数据来源。它们还将用于提供有关提高检索和使用数据可能性的建议，包括关于检索和使用这些数据的（法律、伦理、方法）风险缓解的建议。
