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Health of Ethnic and Minority Groups

Last update: 7 November 2006,
by Maureen Bell

OTHER HEALTH TOPICS

Aboriginal and Other Indigenous People's Health

Adolescent Health

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Bioethics

Cancer

Cardiovascular Disease

Complementary Medicine

Consumer Health Information

Databases Available to University of Adelaide Staff and Students

Diabetes

Dictionaries

Environmental Health

Epidemiology

Ethnic and Minority Groups

Evidence-Based Medicine

General Health Sites

Health Issues in Developing Countries

Health Promotion

Immunisation

Infectious Diseases

Legislation

Nutrition

Obesity

Occupational Health and Safety

Rural Health

Smoking and Health

Women's Health

I've divided this page into two sections. The first provides you with some tips on searching for material on Medline, and the second provides links to other web resources, including some full text material.

Searching Medline

Remember that Medline has a Thesaurus of terms - MeSH (Medical Subject Headings), a controlled vocabulary used for indexing articles in Medline. MeSH terminology provides a consistent way to retrieve information where authors may use different terminology for the same concepts.

You will find material on this subject in Medline, but you will need to be aware of the thesaurus (MeSH) terms used to search for the various topics. Medline does not use the word "migrants" in its list of terms, so you'll need to choose from some of the options below.

MeSH -Anthropology, Cultural

MeSH - Culture

MeSH - Emigration and Immigration

MeSH -Ethnic Groups

MeSH - Minority Groups

MeSH - Refugees

MeSH - Transients and Migrants

Many topics in MeSH have hierarchies of more specific subcategories or related terms. The indentations in the lists reflect the structure of the hierarchy, and the + signs at the end of terms indicate that there is a further hierarchy of terms not displayed here. Any of these terms can be searched individually, or you can "explode" terms to search sections of the list.

When you search for subjects using MeSH terms from the Medline thesaurus you will also have the option of appending subheadings to narrow the focus of your search.

For a list of the abbreviations used for subheadings in PubMed click here

Try the search formulation below to search for articles on public health and migrants in Australia

COMBINE

Refugees (MeSH term)

OR

Emigration and Immigration (MeSH term)

AND

Public Health (MeSH term)
Branch of medicine concerned with the prevention and control of disease and disability, and the promotion of physical and mental health of the population on the international, national, state, or municipal level.

AND

Australia (Mesh term)
The advantage of searching Australia as a thesaurus term is that "exploding" this thesaurus term will search for Australia as a whole, as well as the individual states and territories.

PubMed Search Formulation

(refugees[majr] OR emigration and immigration[majr]) AND public health[majr] AND australia[mh] AND english[lang]

If you search multiple topics which you then want to "AND" to another topic you need to connect them with "OR" and bracket them to preserve the logic of your search. In the search above I have used brackets to ensure that BOTH refugees and emigration and immigration are matched with public health.

PubMed's default setting is to "explode" all terms, and so this search will include all the subcategories of public health. Clixck on the link below to see them listed.

MeSH - Public Health

The search is then limited to Australia and its states and territories, and finally to articles in English or with English abstracts.

Click here to see how it works. PubMed Search

Other Sources

DiversityRx
Promoting language and cultural competence to improve the quality of health care for minority, immigrant, and ethnically diverse communities Diversity Rx is supported by The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) Resources for Cross Cultural Health Care (RCCHC) and Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation of Menlo Park, CA.

Ethnicity and Health Specialist Library
Part of the National Library for Health in the U.K.

EthnoMed
The EthnoMed site is an Ethnic Medicine Guide from Harborview Medical Center, University of Washington, and contains information about cultural beliefs, medical issues and other related issues pertinent to the health care of recent immigrants to Seattle, many of whom are refugees fleeing war-torn parts of the world.

Health Survey for England: the Health of Minority Ethnic Groups '99
Health Survey for England 2004: Health of Ethnic Minorities
The Health Survey for England is an annual survey of the health of the population. It has an annually repeating core accompanied by different topic modules each year.

Minority Ethnic Communities and Health
At the request of the Ethnic Advisor for the United Kingdom (UK) Department of Health, the United States (US) agreed to collaborate with the UK on issues of vital concern to both countries as it relates to the health of minorities. The purpose of this collaboration is to provide a forum to exchange information on minority health needs in each country and to develop an agenda for long-term collaboration on improving the health of racial and ethnic minority populations in both countries.

Multicultural Health Resources
From the Queensland Government's Queensland Health site.

Office of Minority Health Resource Center (U.S.)
This site has a searchable database with information on publications, programs, and organisations involved with minority health issues.

Transcultural and Multicultural Health Links
From the New mexico State University Library this site is compiled and created by Ellen Bosman. It contains a wide array of links on religious groups, ethnic groups, and other special populations.

Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care
Unequal treatment: confronting racial and ethnic disparities in health care / Brian D. Smedley, Adrianne Y. Stith, and Alan R Nelson, editors, Committee on Understanding and Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care, Board on Health Sciences Policy, Institute of Medicine. National Academy Press, 2002.