Health of people with selected citizenships in Germany: results from the interview survey GEDA Fokus

BACKGROUND: Health chances and risks of people with a history of migration vary according to a wide range of social, migration-related as well as structural factors. Aim of this contribution is to describe the health of people with selected citizenships living in Germany on the basis of various health indicators from the field of non-communicable diseases and to identify relevant determinants of the respective outcomes. METHODS: Analyses are based on data from the multilingual and multimodal interview survey GEDA Fokus, which was conducted from 11/21 until 05/22 among 18- to 79-year-old people with Croatian, Italian, Polish, Syrian or Turkish citizenship living in Germany. Poisson regressions were used to calculate prevalence ratios and 95% confidence intervals to examine the association between the individual indicators (chronic diseases or long-term health problems, coronary heart disease, diabetes mellitus and depression) and various social as well as migration-related characteristics. RESULTS: In particular, older age, low income, a longer duration of stay, a low sense of belonging to society in Germany and self-reported experiences of discrimination in everyday life are associated with higher prevalence of all the health outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: Given the importance of subjective sense of belonging to the society in Germany and self-reported experiences of discrimination for the health outcomes studied, the results point to health inequalities among people of selected citizenships that are partly caused by mechanisms of social exclusion. KEY MESSAGES: • Low income, self-reported experiences of discrimination in everyday life and a lower sense of belonging to society in Germany are associated with increased prevalence of non-communicable diseases. • Social and structural exclusion mechanisms must be sustainably dismantled in order to ensure health equity.