POLICY BRIEF article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Policy
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1517238
Actions to respond to a troubled immigration environment
Provisionally accepted
- 1Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, United States
- 2Grand Canyon University, Phoenix, Arizona, United States
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Migrants make up over 14% of the US population. Migrants' perceptions and misperceptions of laws and impressions of the immigration environment influence their health and healthcare use. There are action steps that healthcare and public health providers can take to prevent migrants from avoiding care and to support their health in a troubled immigration environment. These include: D Making it clear that healthcare and public health entities do not have a role in immigration enforcement; D Communicating record transfer, access, and storage policies; D Clarifying rules regarding immigration penalties and health service use; and D Ensuring that migrants enjoy the right of confidentiality afforded to US residents. Public health representatives should expand preparedness efforts to include the potential for future hostile immigration-related discourse and legislation.
Keywords: Immigration policy, Migrant health, Migrant healthcare utilization, immigration environment, legislation
Received: 25 Oct 2024; Accepted: 29 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Galletly, Ruelas and Quinn. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Carol Galletly, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, United States
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.