Health of Ethnic and Minority Groups

Last update: 13 October 2009,
by Maureen Bell

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

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

Centre for Culture, Ethnicity & Health - Resources & Library
CEH grew out of North Richmond Community Health Limited, which provides medical, dentistry, counselling, cultural and allied health services to the communities of the City of Yarra in Victoria.

Diversity Health Institute Clearinghouse: Australian multicultural health gateway

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.

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.

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

Multicultural Mental Health Australia

NHS Evidence - Ethnicity and Health Specialist Library
NHS Evidence - ethnicity and health aims to select the best available evidence about management of a health care service and specific needs in health care for migrant and minority ethnic groups.

NSW Multicultural Health Communication Service

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.

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.