Scholarly record

IMPACT OF SOCIAL FACTORS ON ROMA AND NON ROMA HEALTH OUTCOMES

Kvetoslava Rimarova, Alexander Ostro

Abstract

Roma communities around Europe create estimated amount of 8 – 12 millions of Roma people living prevalently in Eastern and Central Europe. Identifying Roma as an ethnic group brings the problem due the national policy in former CEE countries where nationality is voluntary in the census and the person can conceive a nationality as a personal feeling. This topic brings the problem to Roma ethnicity assessment. Roma themselves do not like to be called Roma or Gypsies, most of identification is coming from external observers featuring main visible signs. In some selected areas of CEE reproductive results now showing increasing amount Roma deliveries also due to global lower reproductive rate or birth rate among non-Roma. Roma newborns creates 30 % what will bring multifactorial problems in the future. To improve situation of Roma including four priorities Health, Housing, Education and Employment have been lunched many activities forced by European programs as well as Roma Decade Inclusion launched by Soros Foundation. All received data confirm negative trends in health status of Roma comparing the majority population or national data. There is a gap in data collection in CEE countries, where approach for data receiving is personal from the existence epidemiological study.

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