Health Care Resource Allocation: Potential Access to Clinics for Florida's Migrant and Seasonal Farm Workers and Their Dependents

• Other Authors: Pastrano, Jimmy M. (authoraut)
• Format: Others
• Language: English; English
• Published: Florida State University
• Subjects: Geography
• Online Access: http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/FSU_migr_etd-2149

Access to health care for a few social groups, such as migrant and seasonal farm workers and their dependents, is uncommonly low. Recent legislation targeting some of these groups have been increasingly successful, while the initiatives regarding agricultural laborers are marginally fulfilled, servicing only a handful of them. This paper argues that the level of access to migrant health clinics in Florida's counties could be increased by utilizing reliable data sets, specifying each clinical site and county census of these workers. Using this data, it was determined that several counties with sizable farm laborer groups lacked access to migrant clinics. Of these counties, a selective set was statistically identified as asserting a critical need for access to clinics; nevertheless, other counties requiring clinics had to be set aside. Therefore, access is still low in Florida, and laborers are continuously in a state of poor health. In the light of this predicament, the study introduces a few measures capable of improving health care access to a greater portion of migrants, seasonals, and their dependents. === A Thesis Submitted to the Department of Geography in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master’S of Science. === Summer Semester, 2008. === June 23, 2008. === Access, Social Justice, Farmworkers, Migrant Health === Includes bibliographical references. === Lisa Jordan, Professor Directing Thesis; Janet E. Kodras, Committee Member; Jonathan I. Leib, Committee Member; Carl P. Schmertmann, Committee Member.