Restrictive ID policies: implications for health equity

We wish to thank Synod Community Services for their critical work to develop, support, and implement a local government-issued ID in Washtenaw County, MI. We also thank Yousef Rabhi of the Michigan House of Representatives and Janelle Fa'aola of the Washtenaw ID Task Force, Lawrence Kestenbaum of the Washtenaw County Clerk's Office, Sherriff Jerry Clayton of the Washtenaw County Sherriff's Office, and the Washtenaw ID Task Force for their tireless commitment to developing and supporting the successful implementation of the Washtenaw ID. Additionally, we thank Vicenta Vargas and Skye Hillier for their contributions to the Washtenaw ID evaluation. We thank the Curtis Center for Research and Evaluation at the University of Michigan School of Social Work, the National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan, and the University of California-Irvine Department of Chicano/Latino Studies and Program in Public Health for their support of the Washtenaw ID community-academic research partnership. Finally, we thank the reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. (Curtis Center for Research and Evaluation at the University of Michigan School of Social Work; National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan; University of California-Irvine Department of Chicano/Latino Studies; Program in Public Health)https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10903-017-0579-3.pdfPublished versio

Racism & the Health of Latina/Latino Communities

Latinas/Latinos in the United States experience a persistent context of racism and xenophobia.1–3 For example, the 2016 presidential election cycle and the subsequent change in presidential administrations were filled with anti-immigrant and anti-Latina/Latino ideologies, policy proposals, and policy spectacles that have continued unabated.4–6 Such discourse and its associated policy proposals and policy changes continue a trend that casts Latinas/Latinos as perpetual foreigners, creates hostile conditions for immigrant communities, and criminalizes those suspected of undocumented migration, dehumanizing Latinas/Latinos in the process.1,7,8 These dynamics are critical components of racialization processes (see Box 21-1) that have important implications for the current and future health and well-being of Latina/Latino communities. Previous research has paid limited attention to the role of racism in shaping the health of Latinas/Latinos. Instead, it has often focused on cultural factors and language use; though these factors are important and contextually specific, they paint an incomplete picture. This chapter seeks to broaden the conversation on Latina/Latino health by providing an overview of the ways in which race and racism narrate the experiences of Latinas/Latinos and how these, in turn, affect their health. We acknowledge the need to engage in analysis that considers race along other axes such as class, gender, and sexuality. Given that this chapter does not center sexuality or gender as our primary analytical lens, we have decided to use Latina/Latino (as opposed to Latinx) throughout the chapter

Racial/Ethnic Discrimination, Intersectionality, and Latina/o Health

In this chapter, we summarize the existing literature on self-reported experiences of racial/ethnic discrimination and health status among Latina/o persons in the USA, explore the implications for Latina/o/x health, and identify future directions of research in this critical area.We reviewed 25 peer-reviewed articles that quantitatively examined the association between self-reported discrimination and mental or physical health, published between 2000 and 2016. The reviewed studies were primarily cross-sectional and few compared Latina/o subgroups.We encourage researchers to examine the health impacts of racial/ethnic discrimination on Latina/o health through intersectionality theory to assess discrimination across multiple intersecting social statuses.We also recommend that researchers examine the longitudinal health consequences of structural forms of racism such as carceral policies, educational policies, environmental quality, immigration enforcement, residential segregation, and health care access and quality across spatial contexts