Health in crises. Migration, austerity and inequalities in Greece and Europe: introduction to the supplement

Abstract

This introduction summarizes and discusses the main findings of the supplement ‘Health in crises. Migration, austerity and inequalities in Greece and Europe’ to the European Journal of Public Health. The supplement applies data from the ESS (2014) health module in combination with the MIGHEAL study, which is a new source of data on the Greek population specially designed to examine health inequalities among and between migrants and natives. This has enabled the authors of the nine articles that constitute this supplement to address several pressing issues about the distribution of health and its determinants in Greece and other European countries. The main finding of the present supplement is the exceptionally high rates of reported depressive symptoms across the whole population residing in Greece and particularly among women. Levels of unmet need for healthcare were also found to be alarmingly high in Greece compared with other European countries, suggesting that the crisis and subsequent austerity policies may have impacted the provision of healthcare services and access to healthcare for broad sections of the population, whether native or migrant.