Health Care Access Among California Farmworker Households in the Desert Southwest

Abstract

This research inquiry aims to understand what processes most substantially impact potential access and realized access to primary health care for farmworker families in California. Potential access refers to the availability of medical services relative to need, while realized access refers to the use of medical services to satisfy those needs (Khan and Bhardwaj, 1994). Key to this research is how the condition of migrating outside one's county of residence affects access to medical services. In this study, political economic policy analysis focuses on how rural health care access at the local level is affected by federal, state, and local health care policies, which work either to secure or to undermine allocations of medical resources for these workers. This research argues that structural policies inherent in public and private health insurance programs for farmworkers are strong determinants of access to medical services.