Call to action on Migration and health

EuroHealthNet has joined a call for better EU action on migrant health.

The joint paper calls for:

• A more holistic, human-centred approach to migration and health Implementation of a robust “health in all” policy, consistent with the EU’s treaty obligations, so that policies in other sectors do not undermine, and where possible support, Europe’s duty to safeguard the right to health, without discrimination.
• Specific and focused initiatives addressing discrimination as a determinant of health, such as funding for research on the impact of stigma and discrimination experienced by migrants and ethnic minorities on their health; and a commitment by European institutions to ending the use of dehumanizing language that refers to any person or form of migration and “illegal”.
• Concrete steps to mitigate the health-related effects of immigration control, such as integrating an explicit family perspective into immigration policy, enacting a clear policy against the detention of children and their families, and the development of guidelines to promote trust in public institutions and the health system by prohibiting the exchange of data for immigration control purposes.
• More and better data on and analysis of migrant and ethnic minority health to better understand and to address in a targeted way health inequalities experienced by migrants and ethnic minorities, and integration of migration status and ethnicity into measures of universal health coverage and social determinants.
• More focus on structural, rather than stop-gap, change to health systems that encourages the adoption of sustainable approaches, grounded in established rights, norms and evidence, and consider specific action to address maternal health, consistent with Sustainable Development Goals 3 and 5.

The associated framing document can be found here.(pdf)

The call and framing document have been developed by PICUM.