Prevention among immigrants: the example of Germany

BACKGROUND: A large and increasing part of the European population has a history of migration. Germany, for example, is home to about 15 million people with migrant background, which amounts to 19% of its population. Migrants may have differences in their lifestyle, health beliefs and risk factors compared to the autochthonous populations. DISCUSSION: As for example studies on children's participation in routine prevention activities have shown, these differences can have a relevant impact on the access of migrants to the health care system and are likely to lower their participation in prevention programs compared to the autochthonous population. To increase the uptake of prevention programs, barriers to access must be identified and approaches to reduce them must be developed. SUMMARY: Taking the example of Germany, a need exists for prevention programs that include (migrant sensitive) and specifically address (migrant specific) migrants. These should be of sufficient scale, evidence-based, sustainable and evaluated at regular intervals.