According to the World Health Organization, over one billion people moved globally in the last decade, and in the United States alone close to 46 million people reported being foreign-born in 2021. Human mobility-related topics are within the scope of health disparities research. The science of health disparities is to investigate the causes of gaps and differences in health outcomes among populations that experience a disadvantage. People who migrate or seek refugee status are rapidly becoming populations who experience or will experience a health disparity during their life course. People move for a variety of reasons such as seeking better jobs and access to better health care; running from famine, war, or natural disasters; and fleeing persecution. Human mobility also has an impact on systems, structures, and the social ecology of societies. There are consequences to health and social outcomes among those experiencing mobility firsthand.
Human Mobility is a global phenomenon and of great importance. One effort is the scholarship ignited by the City University of New York Institute for Health Equity (CIHE) Academic Summit of 2023 titled: “Migration and Health: A Human Rights Perspective”. See here the
Conference proceedings CIHE Events _ Migration and Health Summit Proceedings.
Many important and relevant topics were presented and more need to be explored. To this end, this Research Topic seeks to serve as a platform for a meaningful discussion of human mobility and its relation to health equity and health disparities (its causes, consequences, interactions with health equity, and health disparities in a global context. This collection aims to showcase research, perspectives, and commentaries about human mobility and its relation to health disparities, health care, health equity, social justice, food security, environmental justice, and more related topics.
Considering these points, the key goal of the Research Topic is to share the research, scholarly work, and knowledge presented during the aforementioned Summit and also welcome external submissions beyond those presented in the Summit to generate further discussion among a wide audience. This Research Topic seeks to collect manuscripts that focus on:
1) Population health research that depicts populations and immigrant groups by sociodemographic descriptions and ancestry, such as etiology studies that examine the determinants and pathways contributing to health disparities, and/or research that developed evidence-based interventions to reduce health disparities focused on populations that experienced human mobility;
2) Health services research focused on populations affected by human mobility;
3) Methodological approaches that intersect individual behaviors, family, and community to study human mobility and health outcomes;
4) Studies or commentaries about human mobility, health barriers, and facilitators in the healthcare sector or social safety networks;
5) Policy papers that study the social and ecological context related to health and human mobility.