Reports from Boston Children’s Hospital Advance Knowledge in Health and Medicine (Disparities in health insurance and healthcare access for immigrant children with special healthcare needs): Health and Medicine

2026 MAY 27 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Investigators publish new report on Health and Medicine. According to news reporting out of Boston, Massachusetts, by NewsRx editors, research stated, “Our objective was to examine healthcare access disparities for children and youth with special healthcare needs (CYSHCN), comparing immigrant and US-born CYSHCN. This was a cross-sectional, retrospective study of 2016-2022 National Survey of Children’s Health data including CYSHCN.”

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from Boston Children’s Hospital, “The primary exposure was child nativity. Primary outcomes were adequate health insurance, usual place for primary care, usual place for sick care, foregone medical care, and difficulty with referrals. We calculated descriptive frequencies and performed univariate analyses with the chi square statistic. We then estimated multivariable logistic regression models evaluating each of the five outcomes, adjusting for individual and state-level characteristics. From 2016-2022, 62,391 US-born children and 1,733 immigrant children were identified as CYSHCN [population estimates: US-born 13,518,819 (19.5%), immigrant 462,757 (14.9%)]. Immigrant compared to US-born CYSHCN had higher rates of inadequate insurance, not having a usual place of primary care, and not having a usual place for sick care (p <0.001). In multivariable models, immigrant CYSHCN had lower odds of uninterrupted health insurance (aOR 0.57, 95%CI 0.37, 0.87), usual place for primary care (aOR 0.59, 95%CI 0.37, 0.92), and usual place for sick care (aOR 0.67, 95%CI 0.50, 0.89) compared to US-born CYSHCN. There were no statistically significant differences for foregone medical care or difficulty with referrals. Immigrant compared to US-born CYSHCN in our study had worse access to health insurance, primary care, and sick care.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Given the significant healthcare needs of CYSHCN, these health disparities must be addressed to improve their health outcomes.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Disparities in health insurance and healthcare access for immigrant children with special healthcare needs. Academic Pediatrics, 2026:103334. Academic Pediatrics can be contacted at: Elsevier Science Inc, Ste 800, 230 Park Ave, New York, NY 10169, USA. (Elsevier - www.elsevier.com; Academic Pediatrics - http://www.journals.elsevier.com/academic-pediatrics/)

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Katherine E. Douglas, Division of Emergency Medicine, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA, United States. Additional authors for this research include Michael C. Monuteaux, Katherine R. Peeler, Ananya Tadikonda, Catherine G. Coughlin, Julie M. Linton and Lois K. Lee.

Publisher contact information for the journal Academic Pediatrics is: Elsevier Science Inc, Ste 800, 230 Park Ave, New York, NY 10169, USA.

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