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Hispanic Health Disparities After a Flood Disaster: Results of a Population-Based Survey of Individuals Experiencing Home Site Damage in El Paso (Texas, USA)

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Abstract

In 2006, El Paso County, a predominantly Hispanic urban area, was affected by a flood disaster; 1,500 homes were damaged. We assessed the health impacts of the disaster upon 475 individuals whose homes were flood-damaged using mail survey data and logistic regression. Substantial proportions of individuals had one or more physical (43 %) or mental (18 %) health problem in the four months following the floods; 28 % had one or more injury or acute effect related to post-flood cleanup. Adverse event experiences, older age, and lower socioeconomic status were significantly associated with negative post-flood health outcomes in all three logistic regression models. A lack of access to healthcare, non-US citizenship, and English proficiency were significant predictors of negative outcomes in both the physical and mental health models, while Hispanic ethnicity (physical), native-birth (mental), and more serious home damage (cleanup) were significant predictors in one model each. The disaster had disproportionate negative health impacts on those who were more exposed, poorer, older, and with constrained resource-access. While a lack of US citizenship and Hispanic ethnicity were associated with higher risks, being less acculturated (i.e., English-deficient, foreign-born) may have protected against health impacts.

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Notes

  1. These characteristics are closely connected with Hispanic ethnicity in El Paso County. In 2006, Hispanics made up 99 % of the county’s total Spanish-speaking population that spoke English not well or at all (115,356/116,270), 93 % of the total foreign-born population (187,809/202,516) and 95 % of the total non-US citizen population (114,363/120,812).

  2. An expert translated the survey from English into Spanish; then the survey was reviewed by multiple bilingual English–Spanish graduate students, and revised to ensure clarity and comparability.

  3. To explore interrelationships between independent variables, we ran supplemental subgroup and interaction analyses. Using only Hispanic subjects, results for the physical health problems and mental health problems models were nearly identical to the model results reported in Table 4 for all subjects. The same independent variables were significant in the same directions. For the Hispanic cleanup injuries/acute effects model, two variables became significant (the relationships were in the same direction as in the model using all subjects). Access to medical care was associated with significantly lower odds, and foreign-birth significantly higher odds, of cleanup injuries/acute effects. This foreign-born effect is probably due to increased participation rates in home site cleanup among people from households with foreign-born members, necessitated by their relatively constrained access to cleanup assistance from organizations involved in providing post-disaster aid. Then, using all subjects we explored interactions between Hispanic ethnicity and each of the variables with significant results in the physical health problems, mental health problems and cleanup injuries/acute effects models that we report in Table 4. The only statistically significant interaction term was “Hispanic ethnicity × adverse event experiences” in both the physical health problems and mental health problems models, demonstrating that Hispanic ethnicity modified the effect of adverse event experiences. Adverse event experiences were more strongly related to physical and mental health problems for Hispanics than for non-Hispanics, but the effects were positive for both subgroups. This highlights the increased health risk for Hispanics who experienced flood-related stressors.

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Acknowledgments

Marilú Gamez, from the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) Languages and Linguistics Department, provided invaluable expertise with survey translation. UTEP students Lorena Sifuentes and Yolanda McDonald assisted with survey administration and data entry. We acknowledge Bill Hargrove from the Center for Environmental Resource Management at UTEP for providing summer research assistantship funding. This project was supported primarily by Award Number P20MD002287 from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent official views of the NIMHD or the National Institutes of Health.

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  1. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), 500 W University Ave, El Paso, TX, 79968, USA

    Timothy W. Collins, Anthony M. Jimenez & Sara E. Grineski

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Correspondence to Timothy W. Collins.

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Collins, T.W., Jimenez, A.M. & Grineski, S.E. Hispanic Health Disparities After a Flood Disaster: Results of a Population-Based Survey of Individuals Experiencing Home Site Damage in El Paso (Texas, USA). J Immigrant Minority Health 15, 415–426 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-012-9626-2

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