Meeting immigrant health challenges: An integrated model in New York City

New York City has traditionally been the portal to America for millions of foreign‐born immigrants. Current immigration echoes this past. Each year, tens of thousands of immigrants and migrants enter New York City. These individuals and families come from diverse cultures and health care systems which continue to impact on their health care needs. How can New York's health care system provide culturally sensitive and epidemiologically informed health services to these immigrants? In 1990, with a grant from the Aaron Diamond Foundation, an interdisciplinary group of professionals established the New York Task Force on Immigrant Health. This paper will describe the work of this unique multi‐disciplinary organisation as it seeks to address issues of health status and service delivery to immigrant populations. The paper will discuss specific issues and strategies with respect to a) the development of data bases, b) ethnographic investigations, c) cross‐cultural and structural barriers to care, d) the creation and analysis of models to integrate traditional and Western bio‐technical health care, and e) the informing and transforming of public policy and programs to result in more linguistically appropriate, culturally sensitive and effective health and social services. The successes of the New York Task Force on Immigrant Health, in a relatively brief period of time, provide both a model and a stimulus for other localities and nation‐states interested in preventing illness and improving the health status of their diverse populations.