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Home » ILC Publications & Resources » Immigrants in Health Care: Keeping Americans Healthy Through Care and Innovation (2016)

This report utilizes data and profiles of foreign-born workers across the U.S. health care industry in medicine and medical science, long-term care and nursing to reveal that immigrants are filling critical functions in the health of all Americans. It was authored by retired Director of The Immigrant Learning Center (The ILC) Public Education Institute Marcia Drew Hohn, EdD, and published by the Institution for Immigration Research, a joint venture between The ILC and George Mason University. Click on the thumbnail on the right to download the full report and a fact sheet.

To launch the report, The ILC hosted a webinar featuring José Ramón Fernández-Peña, MD, MPA, Joyce Sackey, MD, and more esteemed figures in the health care field.

The report balances facts and figures with real-life stories of immigrants in U.S. health care. The report finds that despite comprising just 13 percent of the population, they play outsized roles in medicine, medical science and long-term care. Immigrants make up:

  • 28 percent of physicians and surgeons
  • 22 percent of nursing, psychiatric and home health aides
  • 40 percent of medical scientists in pharmaceutical research and development

Get this and other reports from the Immigration Research Library, The ILC’s premier immigration research database.

Elizabeth Mande

Certified Nursing Assistant
Country of Origin: Democratic Republic of the Congo

Nam Tran

Neuro-Oncology Surgeon
Country of Origin: Vietnam