Primary Submission Category: Policy
Constructing county-level measures of sociopolitical climates that may influence the health of Latinos in the U.S.
Authors: Fabiola Moncerrat Perez-Lua Maria-Elena De Trinidad Young Gabriela E. Lazalde
Presenting Author: Fabiola Moncerrat Perez-Lua*
U.S. and foreign-born Latinos in the U.S. experience the negative health impacts of the federal immigration system and state immigrant policies. Legal status has been linked to negative health outcomes among U.S. and foreign-born Latinos. State immigrant policies that either expand rights, protections, and benefits to immigrant residents or further criminalize and exclude immigrants have also been shown to influence the health of Latinos in the U.S. Recently, attention has been brought to the convergent influence of multiple restrictive and inclusive state immigrant policies on Latino health. However, less is known about the convergent influence of local immigrant policy implementation and social conditions on their health. Here, we constructed a composite index of local social and political climates that may influence the health of Latinos in California. Guided by the structural racism and racialized legal status frameworks, we conducted a policy scan and targeted literature review to identify policies and social inequities that have been linked to or may influence Latino health. Then, we constructed seven county-level measures of local policy climate using indicators of policy implementation in the healthcare, education, social welfare, employment, and policing and enforcement domains. We constructed 11 measures of social climate using indicators of social inequities in healthcare, education, labor, income, policing and enforcement, and environment. Policy and social measures were aggregated to generate composite scores of political and social climates. We generated maps to illustrate the county-level variation and geographical patterns in sociopolitical climates across the 58 California counties. This study provides an approach for measuring local-level variation in sociopolitical climates, and an opportunity to gain insights about the influence of local sociopolitical climates on Latino health.