scholarly journals Health Insurance Literacy Among International College Students

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-68
Author(s):  
Adebola Adegboyega ◽  
Chigozie Nkwonta ◽  
Jean Edward

In this qualitative descriptive study, we examine health insurance literacy among a group of international college students. They were recruited from a public, co-educational Southeastern university in the United States during the fall semester of 2016 to participate in semistructured interviews. Data were gathered through a demographic questionnaire, two focus group discussions, and individual interviews. Interview sessions were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using a thematic analysis approach. Three themes emerged, including knowledge of health insurance options and benefits information, affordability, and unmet expectations. These findings show the need for higher education institutions to develop a plan to integrate international students into U.S. health care. International students are a vulnerable population; therefore, increasing health insurance literacy is vital to making an optimal health insurance choice, improving access to health care, and using health care efficiently. Future research should tailor educational interventions to mitigate poor health insurance literacy among international college students.

JCSCORE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Sonia H. Ramrakhiani ◽  
Andrew M. Byrne ◽  
Christopher A. Sink

Although international students comprise a significant percentage of the college population, limited attention is directed to their safety needs. This study measured the experiences and perceptions of campus safety among international college students in the United States. The researchers sampled participants from institutions around the country, who self-identified as international students. A researcher-developed 53-item Likert scale questionnaire, the International College Students’ Safety Questionnaire (ICSSQ), was administered to the sample. Findings from the exploratory factor analysis provided preliminary evidence for a four-factor solution for the 26-item ICSSQ with adequate internal consistency. Salient demographic variables, such as, nationality, college status and perceived proficiency in English, were found to be significantly linked to derived factor scores. Implications for institutional adoption of this instrument, along with limitations and directions for future research are included.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Li

While Internet use plays an increasingly important role in individuals’ lives, little is known about its potential to influence addictive behaviors. Guided by the acculturative stress theory, we examined the relationships between acculturative stress, gender, age, length of stay, and Internet addiction among international college students. Data were collected from 111 international undergraduate and graduate students studying in the United States. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses reported that acculturative stress and gender significantly predict Internet addiction among international college students. In this sample, neither age nor length of stay predicts Internet addiction. Our findings paint a picture of the potential influence of acculturative stress on Internet addiction. We offer suggestions for future research on Internet addiction and acculturative stress, particularly for international college students


Author(s):  
Clémentine Berthelemy

This chapter intends to discuss the experiences of international college students regarding racial prejudice on campus and explore the role of student associations as a way to increase cross-cultural interactions between domestic and international students. The aim is to examine how prejudice, more specifically racial-ethnic prejudice, affects their college experience. The findings suggest that active involvement in campus activities promote interaction across cultures and reduce racial prejudice. This chapter engages qualitative individual interviews with Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Nigerian, Kenyan, and Ghanaian undergraduate international students (N=31). It is believed that this method is best suited to apprehend their experiences and to fully understand how they create meaning of perceived racial prejudice. Their testimonies are presented through verbatim transcripts of the interview sessions conducted in 2014-2015, in three New York research universities. A discussion of their experiences follows and suggestions for future research conclude this chapter.


Author(s):  
Emily Vardell

This paper presents a literature review of health insurance literacy with a focus on specialized populations in the U.S. and how limited health literacy skills exacerbate health disparities. This discussion places this issue within the context of contemporary U.S. health care reform and makes connections between health insurance coverage and health disparities. This overview of the research on health insurance literacy covers research across the health insurance spectrum, from awareness of health insurance options to assessments of health literacy skills in specific populations as well as from readability of health insurance informational materials to the availability of multilingual services. In exploring the demographic variables associated with lower health insurance literacy skills, this paper reviews the body of current research in this area to make connections between populations more likely to have unequal access to health care and how having limited skills in navigating the U.S. health care system may compound these disparities. In addition, this paper proposes an Integrated Framework for Health Insurance Literacy as a method for further studying the connections between demographic factors, health coverage, health status, and health insurance literacy skills.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-191
Author(s):  
Alexander Jones ◽  
Young Kim

Set in the context of four-year colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, this study examined how the level of thriving differs for international students and their domestic peers, how the level of thriving differs across various subgroups within international students, and how academic self-confidence is associated with the level of thriving for international students. Using data from the 2017 Thriving Quotient, this study found that international students were less likely to thrive during their college years than their domestic peers and that Asian international students were less likely to thrive than their international peers of other racial groups. Findings also suggested that academic self-confidence was significantly and positively related to international students’ thriving during their college years.


Author(s):  
Patricia Illingworth ◽  
Wendy E. Parmet

The United States is unique among developed countries in not providing health insurance to all of its citizens. But newcomers, both legal and undocumented, are far more likely to be uninsured than natives. This chapter reviews US law, including the Affordable Care Act, regarding immigrants’ access to health insurance, exposing the conflicting and inconsistent policies towards including immigrants within the nation’s health care system. These policies not only reduce immigrants’ access to health care, they add significant complexity to the US health care system, and create a range of health and economic costs to immigrants and natives alike. The chapter focuses in particular on the practice of medical repatriation, whereby hospitals send seriously ill immigrants to their countries of origin, explaining how the conflicting edicts of US health law encourage the practice by requiring hospitals to treat all emergency patients regardless of citizenship or insurance status, while denying many immigrants public benefits for nonemergency care.


Author(s):  
Sushama Rajapaksa ◽  
Lauren Dundes

This study addresses the need for information helpful in retaining international college students studying in the United States. This research compares the adjustment of 182 international students to a comparison sample of American students to determine whether students coming to the United States from abroad have greater difficulty adjusting to college life. International students are more likely to feel lonely, homesick, and as if they had left part of themselves at home. In addition, this study confirms the importance of social network in the adjustment of international students (but not Americans) although the number of close friends does not predict whether an international student is satisfied with his or her social network. The implications for administrators working to retain international students are discussed.


2013 ◽  
Vol 55 (Supl.4) ◽  
pp. 508 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven P Wallace ◽  
Michael Rodriguez ◽  
Imelda Padilla-Frausto ◽  
Armando Arredondo,

Objective. To identify policies that increase access to health care for undocumented Mexican immigrants. Materials and methods. Four focus groups (n=34 participants) were conducted with uninsured Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles, California. The feasibility and desirability of different policy proposals for increasing access were discussed by each group. Results. Respondents raised significant problems with policies including binational health insurance, expanded employer-provided health insurance, and telemedicine. The only solution with a consensus that the change would be feasible, result in improved access, and they had confidence in was expanded access to community health centers (CHC’s). Conclusions. Given the limited access to most specialists at CHC’s and the continued barriers to hospital care for those without health insurance, the most effective way of improving the complete range of health services to undocumented immigrants is through immigration reform that will bring these workers under the other health care reform provisions.


1974 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 583-598 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Bodenheimer ◽  
Steven Cummings ◽  
Elizabeth Harding

The private health insurance industry in the United States began as a money-collection mechanism for hospitals and doctors, and has evolved into an important profit-making sector of the economy. Blue Cross is dominated by hospital representatives and serves to channel money into the nation's hospitals. Physicians control Blue Shield and are its principal beneficiaries. And commercial insurance companies are closely linked to banks and industrial corporations through the country's large financial empires. Some effects of this elite control over the health insurance industry have been inadequate and distorted insurance coverage, discrimination against the elderly, the sick, and the poor, and rapidly rising medical costs. In addition, the control of Medicare and Medicaid by private insurance institutions has contributed to the enormous inflation produced by these programs. Though governments, consumers, and even the insurance industry itself are beginning to apply controls to the unprecedented medical inflation of the late 1960s, these controls tend to limit access to health care, especially for low-income people. Unless insurance companies are barred from the health care field and a public financing mechanism based on progressive taxation is introduced, health care will never be an equal right for everyone in the United States.


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