Comparison of bio-sociodemographic, obstetric and perinatal characteristics among immigrant and native women in the Metropolitan Region in Chile.

Abstracts Background International migration is an increasing public health concern, particularly regard to maternal and neonatal health. Objective To compare obstetric and neonatal variables among native and immigrant childbearing women in a clinical hospital in Santiago, Chile. Method A cross-sectional, analytic study with 2,598 childbearing women and their newborn examined between January and July 2015. Data were collected from clinical records by students who had previously been trained. Ethical approval was obtained from the local Ethics Committee at the hospital. All participants signed an informed consent form. A descriptive and comparative analysis was performed. For comparison, a Chi-square test was used for categorical variables, and Student t-test was used for quantitative variables. Results Among the included women, 41.5% (n = 1078) were immigrants. The immigrants' mean age was 28.1 ± 6.4 years, and that of natives was 26.8 ± 6.9 (p Conclusion In general, immigrants present better maternal and neonatal indicators than native women. Controversially, this is known as the ‘healthy immigrant' phenomenon in the literature.