Al extremo norte del puente aéreo: las puertorriqueñas en los Estados Unidos / To the northernmost part of the airlift bridge: the Puerto Ricans in the United States

This article examines the available data on the health status of Puerto Rican women in the United States. Statistics on reproductive health, cancer and AIDS indicate that the health status of these women is lower than that of both their U.S. and island counterparts. Usually, the health of immigrants lies somewhere between that of the population of the country of origin, and that of the 'host' country. Puerto Rican women, however, deviate from this pattern. The health lag which U.S. Puerto Rican women are experiencing suggests that the social dislocation which accompanies migration has not diminished over time. Puerto Rican women in the U.S., on the contrary, seem to have lost protective factors that shielded them from certain risks without acquiring the monetary, psycological, and information resources which would allow them to adopt preventive measures and make a more effective use of the existing health services

The death divide: differentials in premature mortality by gender in Puerto Rico

The use of the indicator ®years of potential life lost¼ (YPLL) highlights the extent to which premature mortality in Puerto Rico is a predominantly male phenomenon. While men accounted for 58.6 percent of all deaths in 1987, they represented fully 71.8 percent of all YPLL attributed to the thirteen leading causes of death. The breakdown of YPLL by gender also underlines sex-specific differences in the causes of mortality. While accidents constitute the leading cause of premature death among men, malignant neoplasms take the lead among women. Similarly, homicides and cirrhosis are significant sources of years of life lost among males, while pneumonia/influenza and diabetes are higher priorities among females. These findings suggest that health promotion strategies need to be gender-specific in order to reach the right targets