Structural and Behavioural Determinants of Immigrant and Non-Immigrant Health Status: Results from the Canadian Community Health Survey

The purpose of this paper, which utilizes data from the Canadian Community! Health Survey (CCHS-Cycle 1.1), is threefold. The first is to examine the health of Canadian immigrants in relation to non-immigrants, focusing on the relationship between key health deternlinants and health status. Second, it tests whether these data support the well-documented 'healthy inlmigrant effect.' The third is to evaluate the usefulness of using a large national database to study "special populations'such as immigrants. Through a comparison OF findings fronl previous studies, the authors highlight tile strengths and weaknesses of different datasets for investigating immigrant health and, by extension, the health of other unique populations in Canada. The present study found that recent arrivals to Canada tended to be substantially healthier than tile Canadian-born population. However, this advantage was lost over time, as imnligrants with longer residence histories (10 years of residence or longer) tended to have inferior health statuses relative to the Canadian-born. These results indicate that the 'healthy inlmigrant effect' continues to man! lest itself in Canada. The findings also suggest that the large sample of inlmigrants in the CCHS facilitated statistically sig,nificant associations between health deternlinants and health status. This is in contrast to the results of previous studies on immigrant health-such as those using tile National Population Health SurvQ/(NPHS)-which reported a number of non-signlificant and counter-intuitive relationships. We suggest that the CCHS, a conzparatively nluch larger dataset with a diverse sample of immigrants, is a useful survey instrunlent to evaluate the health and well-being of special populations.