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Adolescent Health

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Encyclopedia of Immigrant Health

Approximately 14 million children and adolescents in the United States are immigrants or have immigrant parents. The population of children and adolescents in immigrant families grew by almost 50% during the 1990s, almost seven times faster than the population of children with US-born parents. The majority of adolescents in immigrant families are of Hispanic or Asian origin, but a growing population of immigrant adolescents includes recently arrived refugees from Eastern Europe and Africa. Adolescents in immigrant families are more likely than native-born adolescents to be poor, live in crowded houses, to be uninsured, to lack a usual source for health care, and to be in fair or poor health.

In 2007, 34.3% of the US Latino population was comprised of individuals under the age of 18. Latino immigrant adolescent health is often influenced by factors including language/cultural barriers and lack of access to preventive health care and health insurance. Some of the leading causes of...

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© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC

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Guarini, T.E., Marks, A.K. (2012). Adolescent Health. In: Loue, S., Sajatovic, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Immigrant Health. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-5659-0_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-5659-0_21

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-5655-2

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