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Recent Immigrants and the Use of Cervical Cancer Screening Test in Canada

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Abstract

Using data from Canadian National Population Health Survey (1998–1999), this paper examined the factors that cause gap in Pap test utilization rate between recent immigrants and other Canadians. The Fairlie non linear decomposition analysis suggests that group differences in the mean values of the variables representing race, language, having regular physician, insurance ownership, and income level are the major factors behind the gap between other Canadians and recent immigrants. The results of the study also show that the Pap test utilization gap between other Canadians and recent immigrants narrows down over time though the process is quite slow.

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Notes

  1. ‘Other’ category includes deferred removal order class, post-determination refugee claimant class, temporary resident permit holders and humanitarian and compassionate/public policy cases.

  2. According to data from 2006 census, more than two-thirds of Canada’s population growth over the past five years was fuelled by immigrant newcomers.

  3. National Cancer Institute: US National Institute of Health. www.cancer.gov

  4. The initial sample size for 20–69 age bracket was 6125. However, 236 observations were dropped because of missing values in personal income, race and length of immigration variables.

  5. As shown in Appendix Tables 7 and 8, these two groups are almost identical with respect to countries of origin.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, Thompson Rivers University, Kamloops, BC, V1S 1X1, Canada

    Ehsan Latif

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  1. Ehsan Latif
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Correspondence to Ehsan Latif.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

Table 7 Characteristics of immigrants (living upto 4 years) by place of birth
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Table 8 Characteristics of immigrants (living 5–9 years) by place of birth
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Table 9 Immigrants to Canada by Class (2004–2007)
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Table 10 Place of birth for the immigrant population of Canada
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Table 11 Immigrants to Canada according to the 5 main countries of birth
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Table 12 Logit regression for probability of having Pap test (country of birth included)
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Latif, E. Recent Immigrants and the Use of Cervical Cancer Screening Test in Canada. J Immigrant Minority Health 12, 1–17 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-009-9237-8

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