At the same time, the good health profile of immigrants highlights how much we still need to learn regarding the determinants of health and the needed policies to improve the health of all Americans and reduce inequities in health across population groups. Especially striking and intriguing are the data for Mexican immigrants. Despite having levels of poverty comparable to those of African Americans and among the lowest levels of access to health care of any racial/ethnic group in the U.S., Mexican immigrants nonetheless have levels of health that are often equivalent and sometimes superior to those of whites (Williams et al 2010). These data emphasize that health is not primarily driven by medical care but by other social contextual factors. However, precisely what these social determinants of health are, and how they may operate in the absence of high levels of SES, and why they change over time is less clear. Accordingly, for both research and policy reasons, there is an urgent need to identify the relevant factors that shape the association between migration status and health for Mexicans and
