Korean Immigrant Women's Health Care Utilization in the United States: A Systematic Review of Literature

Abstract

A systematic literature review was performed to review empirical evidence, published between 1946 and 2015, regarding Korean immigrant women's health care utilization and factors affecting their health care utilization in the United States. Andersen's behavioral model of health services utilization was used as a framework and was expanded to analyze the pattern of health services utilization and to identify characteristics of access to health care. A total of 32 reports were included. Variables were categorized into 1 of 5 individual determinants: cultural, enabling, predisposing, need, and reinforcing factor. A total of 423 relationships were found between individual determinants and health care utilization. All reinforcing variables were effective in increasing Korean immigrant women's health care utilization in a positive way. Interventions targeting multiple factors were strongly effective in encouraging Korean immigrant women to utilize health services for cancer screening. However, these studies yielded inconsistent findings related to outcome measures due to the variability of measurement criteria.