Rural and Urban Hispanic Patients of the Veterans Health Administration

AbstractHispanic Veterans are the largest growing racial and ethnic minority group in the Veterans Health Administration (VA) system. Though recent research has found increasing suicide rates in this population and a growing rural –urban disparity, literature on core population characteristics remains sparse. We used extensive patient demographic and clinical data from VA’s electronic medical record repository to examine geographic and longitudinal variation in Hispanic VA patients from 2001 to 2018. As the first such det ailed characterization of this population, this study was largely descriptive in nature, and included heatmaps of Hispanic patient residence across rural and urban US counties, along with descriptive measures of patient characteristics by rurality, and first year of VA use. We found that Hispanic pa tients (n = 722,893) represented 5.2% of new VA users between 2001 and 2018, a proportion which grew nearly 90% from 4.0% (2001–2006) to 7.5% (2013–2018). Hispanic patients were largely White, male, under age 50, and had minimal illness or disability. The highest prevalence of Hispanic patients was i n the Southwest US/Mexico border region, while the Midwest experienced the largest growth of Hispanic patients. Rural Hispanic patients were more likely to be older, male, and to live in areas characterized by small foreign-born populations and high socioeconomic deprivation. Compared with Hispanic patients entering the VA system in 2001–2006, patients ...
Source: Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: research