Nearly a quarter of respondents in a recent survey of New Orleans’ Latinos have never been to a doctor for a checkup or other care, and only about half had been to a doctor in the last two years, according to a newly released report on healthcare in the city’s growing Hispanic community.
Carolina Hernandez, executive director of Puentes New Orleans, the community development group that produced the report, hailed it as a “first of its kind” look into the barriers to access and other health challenges facing the city’s burgeoning Latino population.
The report, which relied on a survey of 279 Latino residents, found that many respondents faced many hurdles in accessing healthcare. As a result, a large share almost never went to the doctor until the problems were severe.
By far the biggest barrier cited by respondents was cost, a factor exacerbated by dismal rates of insurance coverage in the Latino community. A full 62 percent said they had no health insurance. That was nearly twice the rate among non hispanic black New Orleanians and nearly four times that of non hispanic white residents, according to a 2013 report by the city’s Health Department.
Predictably, then, respondents reported using the health system sparingly. About 24 percent said they had never been to the doctor. When respondents did use the system, they were likely to go to an emergency room, possibly because chronic conditions had worsened due to lack of regular preventative care, according to the report.
A quarter of respondents who had used medical care in the last five years said they visited emergency rooms for care. That’s compared 38 percent who sought treatment in community health clinics, where service might have been cheaper and better suited to their ailments.
Many may not go to the clinics because they don’t know where to go — 21 percent said they didn’t know where to go for care — or because they couldn’t communicate with the staff at the clinics.
When researchers investigated the Spanish-language service at hospitals and clinics, they found that most facilities had some level of interpretation for patients on site, but only 8 of the 29 clinics and hospitals contacted had any Spanish speakers available by phone.
One facility said that they only treated English speaking patients, Hernandez said.
In focus groups, participants reported feeling unwelcome at medical facilities due to their ethnicity.
Hernandez presented the report from the Tulane School of Medicine Teaching Kitchen, housed in the Whole Foods on Broad Street in Mid-City, near the epicenter of growth in the city’s Latino population.
The Census Bureau estimated that 5.2 percent of the population in Orleans Parish was Hispanic in the five years up to 2013, up from 3.1 percent in 2000.
Mid-City and the Tulane/Gravier community have seen a disproportionate share of that increase. The Hispanic population in Mid-City jumped from 10 percent in 2000 to more than 15 percent in 2010. Across Broad Street in the Tulane/Gravier area, the community more than tripled as a share of the total, increasing from 2.6 percent to 11.6 percent.
Councilwoman Susan Guidry, whose district includes some of the Mid-City neighborhood where many Latino New Orleanians live, said that quantifying the problems facing the community is the first step toward addressing them. “It gives structure to what can be done going forward,” she said. “Things can start to move forward in a much more directed and way and more quickly.”
Councilwoman LaToya Cantrell, whose district includes the heart of the hispanic community around Broad Street and Tulane Avenue, also hailed the report, vowing to work to improve the lives of the city’s immigrant population.
Puentes produced the report in partnership with the Committee for a Better New Orleans and the city’s Health Department. It was funded with support from the Chevron Corporation.
