Emilio A. Parrado’s research while affiliated with University of Pennsylvania and other places

Introduction and Aims The prioritisation of oral health in all health policies in the WHO African region is gaining momentum. Dental schools in this region are key stakeholders in informing the development and subsequent downstream implementation and monitoring of these policies. The objectives of our study are to determine how dental schools contribute to oral health policies (OHPs) in this region, to identify the barriers to and facilitators for engaging with other local stakeholders, and to understand their capacity to respond to population and public health needs. Methods We developed a needs assessment survey, including quantitative and qualitative questions. The survey was developed electronically in Qualtrics and distributed by email in February 2023 to the deans or other designees at dental schools in the WHO African region. Data were analysed in SAS version 9.4 and ATLAS.ti. Results The capacity for dental schools to respond to population and public health needs varied. Most schools have postgraduate programs to train the next generation of researchers. However, these programs have limitations that may hinder the students from achieving the necessary skills and training. A majority (75%) of respondents were aware of the existence of national OHPs and encountered a myriad of challenges when engaging with them, including a lack of coordination with other stakeholders, resources, and oral health professionals, and the low priority given to oral health. Their strengths as technical experts and researchers was a common facilitator for engaging with OHPs. Conclusion Dental schools in the region face common challenges and facilitators in engaging in the OHP process. There were several school-specific research and training capacities that enabled them to respond to population and public health needs. Overall, shared challenges and facilitators can inform stakeholder dialogues at a national and subnational level and help develop tailored solutions for enhancing the oral health policy pipeline.

This study examines the COVID-19 pandemic’s immediate and long-term impact on Argentina’s labor market with a focus on gender disparities and the mediating role of the public vs. private sectors. Using household survey data, we assess men and women’s employment trends before, during, and after the pandemic. Our findings reveal gender-specific recovery patterns that interact with the employment sector. The most prominent short-term effect of the pandemic was a dramatic increase in inactivity for both men and women. However, men recovered their level of labor force participation sooner than women, and one of the mechanisms behind this disparity was sector employment. While men predominantly benefitted from quicker reintegration in both the formal and informal private sectors, women leaned toward the public sector for stability during and after the pandemic. The heightened feminization of public sector employment is a further indication that the sector is critical for sustaining women’s employment and promoting gender equity in the labor market.

This paper investigates gender differences in the short- and longer-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on employment status in Argentina. Using individual cross-sectional and panel data from household surveys, we compare employment status (inactive, unemployed, self-employed, or employed, distinguishing between the formal and informal sectors) before, immediately after, and a year after the pandemic. We examine how gender intersects with education and age in affecting employment status transitions and the extent to which COVID-19 deepened gender, educational, and age inequalities. In the short term, the pandemic impacted the labor market position of men and women similarly. Partly because of the labor market policies of Argentina, the pandemic idled both men and women, particularly those in the informal sector but also the self-employed. However, after the pandemic, men regained their pre-pandemic status while women remained (or became) inactive. Within genders, labor market recovery varied with education and age. Young and less educated women were more exposed to the immediate and longer-term negative effects in a manner not observed among men. The pandemic accentuated not only gender inequalities in the labor market but also socioeconomic inequalities among women.

Migration, detention, and deportation are often rife with violence. This study sought to examine associations among pre-migration experiences, detention conditions, and mental health among Mexicans deported from the U.S. to Mexico between 2020 and 2021. Data from the Migrante Project (N=306, weighted N=14,841) were analyzed using descriptive statistics and unadjusted and adjusted multivariate regression models. The prevalence of a lifetime mental health diagnosis was 18.5%. Exposure to adverse conditions in detention (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]=17.56, p<.001) and having been detained in both immigration and non-immigration facilities (AOR=9.70, p=.042) were significantly associated with increased odds of experiencing abuse during migrants' most recent detention. Experiencing abuse during migrants' most recent detention was, in turn, associated with increased odds of a lifetime mental health diagnosis (AOR=4.72, p<.005). Targeted, trauma-informed mental health services are needed for deported Mexican migrants.

We investigate early childbearing among Maghrebi and Latin American immigrant women and their descendants in Spain. We use a new database linking Natural Movement of the Population records between 2011 and 2015 to the 2011 Spanish Census. To identify whether immigrants’ descendants converge toward the Spanish very reduced profile of early childbearing, we run Poisson regression models. While Latin American immigrants converge toward the native population, among Maghrebi immigrants, the difference among those who arrived in Spain at more than 15 years of age is reduced, but the difference does not disappear in the second generation. To examine the differences in early childbearing between these two immigrant groups, we implement a multivariate decomposition. The mean number of children born between 2011 and 2015 was 0.12 for Latin American and 0.32 for Maghrebi immigrants. Differences in measured characteristics account for 39.72% of this difference and differences in effects account for 60.28%.

The U.S. mainland Puerto Rican population has experienced dramatic growth and geographic dispersion in recent decades. Once overwhelmingly concentrated in the Northeast, especially New York City, Puerto Rican populations have grown dramatically in newer destinations such as Orlando, Florida. While the implications of dispersion for status attainment have received significant scholarly attention for Latinos as a whole, variation across national origin groups are less well understood. Owing to their unique racial and socioeconomic composition and historical settlement patterns, the impact of dispersion on dimensions such as homeownership could be particularly important for Puerto Ricans, since it implies a dramatic change in housing and economic context. This paper draws on U.S. Census data to examine the impact of metropolitan context, including a typology of destination types that reflects dispersion patterns, on Puerto Rican homeownership. A central objective is evaluating how location shapes racial inequality within the group, as well as the homeownership gaps between Puerto Ricans and non-Latino White, non-Latino Black, and other Latino Americans. Results show that metropolitan context, including housing conditions, residential segregation, and type of co-ethnic community, helps explain inequality among Puerto Ricans and relative to other groups. Thus, dispersion not only boosts Puerto Rican homeownership overall, it also contributes to narrowing inequality between Puerto Ricans and others, and racial inequality among Puerto Ricans.

The context of reception is an important theoretical and empirical tool for understanding immigrant assimilation. Yet, this concept has been narrowly defined as a gender-neutral socioeconomic and political context that immigrants encounter at arrival. We argue that the concept can be useful for understanding immigrant women’s workforce assimilation, but that it needs to be expanded to incorporate the gender-specific characteristics of immigrant flows at arrival, factors that are less central to men’s incorporation. Gendered cohort dimensions such as the sex ratio, share of women migrating unmarried, and share of men and women who are highly educated shape immigrant women’s employment trajectories and contribute to national origin differences in labor force participation. We leverage a synthetic double-cohort approach using U.S. Census data from 1990 to 2019 to track immigrants’ work trajectories over years since migration. We propose a five-group typology to simplify the analysis of national origin variation in patterns of workforce incorporation. We assess the impact of individual socioeconomic and gendered cohort characteristics at different points in the adaptation process (arrival, medium, and long term) to demonstrate the utility of a gendered context of reception for understanding national origin variation in immigrant’s modes of incorporation.

Background Mexican migrants traveling across the Mexico-United States (U.S.) border region represent a large, highly mobile, and socially vulnerable subset of Mexican nationals. Population-level health data for this group is hard to obtain given their geographic dispersion, mobility, and largely unauthorized status in the U.S. Over the last 14 years, the Migrante Project has implemented a unique migration framework and novel methodological approach to generate population-level estimates of disease burden and healthcare access for migrants traversing the Mexico-U.S. border. This paper describes the rationale and history of the Migrante Project and the protocol for the next phases of the project. Methods/design In the next phases, two probability, face-to-face surveys of Mexican migrant flows will be conducted at key crossing points in Tijuana, Ciudad Juarez, and Matamoros (N = 1,200 each). Both survey waves will obtain data on demographics, migration history, health status, health care access, COVID-19 history, and from biometric tests. In addition, the first survey will focus on non-communicable disease (NCD), while the second will dive deeper into mental health and substance use. The project will also pilot test the feasibility of a longitudinal dimension with 90 survey respondents that will be re-interviewed by phone 6 months after completing the face-to-face baseline survey. Discussion Interview and biometric data from the Migrante project will help to characterize health care access and health status and identify variations in NCD-related outcomes, mental health, and substance use across migration phases. The results will also set the basis for a future longitudinal extension of this migrant health observatory. Analyses of previous Migrante data, paired with data from these upcoming phases, can shed light on the impact of health care and immigration policies on migrants’ health and inform policy and programmatic responses to improve migrant health in sending, transit, and receiving communities.

In “Buenos Aires. From successful city/nation-building to fragmented amalgamation”, Marcelo Cavarozzi details the connection between immigration and the construction of Buenos Aires as a global city. Cavarozzi analyzes the evolution of economic segregation in Buenos Aires by describing how the spatial order that separated the city centre from its surrounding areas developed. This commentary takes over where Cavarozzi’s paper ends and describes the changing composition of the immigrant population of Buenos Aires since the 1970s in comparison to U.S. cities. The growth of the Latin American population and the decline in immigration from other areas have resulted in a high degree of specialization of international migration to Buenos Aires, transforming the city from a global to a regional immigrant destination. Buenos Aires has also experienced changes in the national origin of immigrant flows with important differences between the Capital Federal and Gran Buenos Aires.