UC Irvine

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.