Implications from the California Health Interview Survey Abstract approved:

The objective of this study is to identify the variation in health care access and utilization among immigrant and U.S. born citizens in California. It aims at finding the reasons behind the disparity so that U.S. health agencies can make more efforts to improve the availability of health care services to immigrants. As an important determinant of health care utilization, the insurance coverage variable is also considered as a type of health care access. It is examined closely to see its relationship with other variables among immigrants. In this essay, Andersen’s Behavioral Model of Health Services Utilization (BHMSU) is used as the theoretical framework. The data are from the 2011-2012 California Health Interview Survey. There are 5,311 naturalized immigrants and 31,801 U.S. born citizens in the available sample. Chi-square tests and student t-tests are applied to detect significant differences in values of explanatory variables between the two groups. A negative binomial model of number of doctor visits and a logistic regression model of insurance coverage are then used to analyze the variation of health care utilization and health care access among immigrants. This study shows that immigrants are less likely t