Wei Hu
Neighbourhood Environment, Individual Characteristics and Immigrant Health in Canada's Metropolitan Areas: A Multi-Level Modeling Approach © 2012
A person’s health status can be affected by both neighbourhood environment and individual characteristics. This study employs a multilevel modeling approach to explore the relationship between individual characteristics, neighbourhood environments and self-reported health status
among the foreign-born and Canadian-born populations in Canada’s Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs). Individual-level data was obtained from the 2005 - 2010 Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) and the neighbourhood-level data came from the 2006 Canada Census. Individual-level socioeconomic, socio-demographic and lifestyle factors, as well as neighbourhood deprivation and neighbourhood ethnic concentration were found to have different degrees of association with self-reported health for immigrant and Canadian-born populations. These factors were associated with the health of Chinese immigrants – the largest immigrant group in Canada – in a different manner than with other immigrants. Strong variations in health status were also found among immigrants living in different Census Metropolitan Areas.