Health Care Access and Utilization among Hispanics Living in New versus Established Destinations: Examining the Moderating Role of Rurality

Shannon M. Monnat, Pennsylvania State University
Raeven Faye Chandler, Pennsylvania State University
Danielle Ely, Pennsylvania State University

We used six years of individual-level data from Hispanic respondents from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System merged with county-level data from the Area Resource Files to examine differences in health care access and utilization among Hispanics living in new vs. established Hispanic destinations with a particular focus on the role of rurality (county size and adjacency to metropolitan areas) in moderating those differences. We found that Hispanics in the newest new destinations are the most likely to have health insurance and a personal doctor and most likely to have obtained a physical health checkup in the past two years but that the advantage of living in a recent new destination is significantly diminished if it is a small non-metropolitan county. The nonmetropolitan disadvantage among Hispanics was explained not by contextual and resource characteristics of nonmetropolitan counties themselves, but by the individual-level resource characteristics of Hispanics living in those counties.