A scoping review of the available literature on the epidemiologic profile of migrants in-transit through South America, Central America, and Mexico from 2013-2025

Background: Migration through Latin America has increased, resulting in new routes and greater diversity among migrants. Timely, accurate data on the epidemiologic profiles of migrants in-transit could inform public health surveillance and interventions. Objective: Provide an overview of the type of data collected on the epidemiologic profiles of migrants in-transit through South America, Central America, and Mexico. Methods: We conducted a scoping review from peer-reviewed and grey literature reporting quantitative health data on selected infectious and non-infectious diseases, vaccination coverage, and causes of mortality migrants in-transit through South America, Central America, and Mexico between 2013 and 2025 by searching Embase, Medline, Global Health, Sociological Abstracts, Scopus, LILACS, NTIS, OpenGrey, and MedRxlv. Results: We identified 7,355 publications; 124 met inclusion criteria. Of these, 24% specified a transit migration phase. Cross-sectional methodology was employed in 86%; and 62% were published in the last four years (2022-2025). Sociodemographic variables were inconsistently reported, and migration-related variables were infrequent. Health concepts frequently investigated included HIV (28%), TB (14%) COVID-19 (15%), mental health (33%), food insecurity (14%), mortality (10%) and vaccination (6%). Chronic conditions were frequently reported as comorbidities. Conclusion: Limited detailed information is available to inform health surveillance and interventions among migrants in-transit. Additional migration-related variables, including time in-transit and transit migration phase, an expansion of data collection to geographical areas experiencing an increase in mobility, and rigorous study designs could yield valuable insights.