Original CommunicationCross-Border Purchase of Medications and Health Care in a Sample of Residents of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
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Cited by (48)
Cross-border healthcare: A review and applicability to North America during COVID-19
2022, Health Policy OPENUnderstanding cross-border mobility in medium-small Mexico-U.S. Binational regions. Mexicali-Imperial Valley case study
2021, Transportation Research Interdisciplinary PerspectivesCitation Excerpt :This scenario has given rise to investigations that seek to understand the cross-border mobility dynamics that occur in the PoEs among Mexico and the United States. However, of the fourteen cross-border metropolitan regions that exist in this international border, most of the studies have been developed in the two largest ones, which are Tijuana, B.C.-San Diego, CA, and Ciudad Juárez, CH-El Paso, TX (Alegría, 2015; Castañeda Pérez, 2020; Fullerton & Walke, 2014; Fullerton, 2007; Herzog & Sohn, 2014; Mendoza-Cota, 2012; Rivera et al., 2009; Viswanathan et al., 2005). These two cross-border metropolitan regions have cities of considerable size and populations of over a million inhabitants on both sides of the border (see Fig. 1).
Analysis of medical tourism at the Andrade port of entry
2021, Journal of the American Pharmacists AssociationCitation Excerpt :Five of these 11 drugs correlated to the top 20 responses found in this study, showing that antibiotics and pain relievers tend to be the most common medications purchased for medical tourism purposes. Rivera et al.16 conducted data analysis on a 2-stage cluster sampling survey conducted from September 2002 to June 2003 using the census tract for El Paso county and census equivalents in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.16 The researchers found that 59.6% (n = 298) of the survey responders in Texas traveling south to Mexico for medical services and medication were insured.
“We go to Tijuana to double check everything”: The contemporaneous use of health services in the U.S. and Mexico by Mexican immigrants in a border region
2021, Social Science and MedicineCitation Excerpt :Some participants who get most of their healthcare in the U.S. go to Mexico to purchase certain pharmaceuticals. In Mexico, pharmaceuticals are often cheaper than in the U.S. and many medications that require a prescription in the U.S. do not require one in Mexico (Pylypa 2001; Rivera et al., 2009). For some participants, they do not go to Mexico to purchase pharmaceuticals because they cannot access medical care in the U.S., but instead because their healthcare providers refuse to provide them with medications they believe they need.
A synthesis on cross-border travel: Focus on El Paso, Texas, retail sales, and pedestrian travel
2015, Research in Transportation Business and ManagementCitation Excerpt :Furthermore, Hispanic ethnicity, previous residency of Mexico (in particular Ciudad Juárez), language barriers, and younger age were also positively associated with cross-border health care and pharmacy shopping. Rivera, Ortiz, & Cardenas (2009) also studied cross-border purchases of medications and health care using data from a U.S.–Mexico binational survey of 1000 randomly selected adults on both sides of the border. The main objective of the study was to assess frequency of pharmaceutical shopping and use of health care services across the border.
Neighborhood context and the Hispanic health paradox: Differential effects of immigrant density on children's wheezing by poverty, nativity and medical history
2014, Health and PlaceCitation Excerpt :This indicates that immigrant status has both compositional (individual) and contextual (neighborhood) effects that are protective of Hispanic children׳s respiratory health. Another plausible explanation for the protective effects of immigrant status, contextually-relevant to the study area, is that foreign-born (predominantly Mexican-origin) Hispanics living in El Paso׳s immigrant enclaves are more likely to cross the international border to Ciudad Juárez in order to access relatively low-cost medical treatments (Rivera et al., 2009). However, that is not a valid primary explanation since less than 5% of Hispanic children whose parents responded to the survey had their usual source of care in Mexico.
Funding/Support? The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Paso del Norte Health Foundation to conduct this survey. The authors have no financial or any other conflict of interest to disclose. Jose C. Rodriguez, CPhT, CCRP, and Armando Gonzalez-Stuart, PhD, provided assistance in conducting this study. University of Texas-Houston School of Public Health supported the conduct of the data analysis and reporting of the findings.