Latina health geographies and intervening community-based organizations in the Chicago suburbs
Guhlincozzi, Aida Rosalia
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/113149
Description
Title
Latina health geographies and intervening community-based organizations in the Chicago suburbs
Author(s)
Guhlincozzi, Aida Rosalia
Issue Date
2021-07-09
Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)
Immigrant Latinas in the United States must contend with multiple hurdles to access basic social services, particularly health care. Their perspectives and experiences as they navigate everyday challenges and face a local health care system that may be inaccessible, inappropriate, and/or even hostile are crucial to understand. These perspectives and experiences provide a clearer picture of their health care access to support and enable community-centered policy. The dissertation project sought to understand the forces that can constrain Latina women from participating in accessible, effective, and linguistically appropriate health care in the Chicago suburbs.
Specifically, how are the space-time constraints Latina immigrant women experience managed when accessing linguistically appropriate health care, and how are the interventions on these barriers community organizations in these communities funded and deployed? These questions were examined through three studies using primary data collection with suburban Chicago Latina immigrant women and suburban non-profit organization workers.
To answer these questions, I employed mixed methods of both collecting survey data from Latina women throughout the Chicago suburbs, and interviewing a purposeful sample of community organizers also throughout Chicagoland. For my data analysis I employed qualitative GIS mapping, spatial analysis, and qualitative interview analysis. My first paper examined the barriers Latinas face in accessing healthcare services that meet their linguistic and financial needs. This paper found that Latina immigrant and immigrant-related women throughout the suburbs lack access to linguistically appropriate healthcare and face long waiting times and high financial burdens. The second paper identified constraints non-profit workers see Latinas managing – such as financial and information barriers – and the interventions these organizations provide – such as case management and other direct services – to mitigate these barriers. These interviews revealed that as organizations are located further from the Chicago center, they have less opportunity to collaborate and retain funding to support vulnerable communities like those Latina women are located within. Understanding the experiences of health care for the growing group of Latinas in the suburbs and the issues and constraints community organizations face in supporting Latinas’ needs will help guide appropriate planning for policymakers and health care institutions in other suburban areas with increasing Latinx populations.
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