scholarly journals Refugee Health Education: Evaluating a Community-Based Approach to Empowering Refugee Women in Houston, Texas

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 949-964 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Leah Frost ◽  
Christine Markham ◽  
Andrew Springer

Although resettlement agencies in the United States assist refugees by offering a variety of local social and health services, refugees are still less likely to access these services. Few studies have evaluated refugee health education interventions focusing on barriers to accessing healthcare and overcoming negative social determinants of health. This study evaluated the feasibility, acceptability, and perceived impact of a yearlong health education intervention to empower Burmese refugee women living in Houston, Texas. The intervention included workshops, community excursions, question and answer (Q&A) sessions, and home visits. The evaluation was a formative qualitative study including interviews with Burmese refugee women who participated in the intervention and local resettlement agency caseworkers. Qualitative content analysis guided the data analysis and was conducted to identify categories and emergent themes. Key findings indicated that motivation to participate in the intervention was impacted by the women’s perceived relevance of health education material to Burmese cultural values and opportunities for hands-on learning to promote self-efficacy. Recommendations for future interventions include the use of community health workers to train refugee health educators, pairing English lessons with health education material to promote development of English language skills, developing teaching materials for refugees with low literacy, establishing bottom-up support from refugee resettlement agencies, and incorporating the social work ecological model to tailor health-focused interventions to the specific needs of the refugee community.

Author(s):  
Alejandra Sanmiguel-López

Research shows that children who speak a language other than English in Latinx and immigrant households make up a significant portion of schoolchildren in the United States and the process of developing and maintaining the heritage language (HL) is complex when that language is distinct from their classroom's language. This chapter explores the motivations parents have in maintaining the home language and the effect this has on Latinx and immigrant English language learners (ELLs) children. The motivations for preserving home language for Latinx and immigrant families are to maintain ties to Latinx cultural values and sustain cultural identity while also providing academic support for Latinx and immigrant ELLs students in the U.S. schools. Research on previous works of literature documents that through family language policy (FLP) practices and HL maintenance, Latinx and immigrant ELLs children can maintain and carry on their cultural values while simultaneously advancing academically in the U.S. schools.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (s1) ◽  
pp. 80-81
Author(s):  
Alejandra Hurtado de Mendoza ◽  
Kristi Graves ◽  
Sara Gómez-Trillos ◽  
Minna Song ◽  
Lyndsay Anderson ◽  
...  

OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: The goal of the study was to assess the acceptability of a culturally targeted narrative video and identify potential avenues for dissemination in a sample of bilingual community health workers who provide services to the Latino community in the United States. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: We piloted the video in a sample of bilingual community health workers who provide services to Latinos (n=31). After watching the video, participants filled out a survey. The survey captured sociodemographic data (e.g. education), their role and experience working with Latinos (e.g. patient navigators), acceptability of the video (e.g. general satisfaction, length of the video, amount of information), and potential dissemination (e.g., dissemination channels, preferred settings to watch the video, and preferred context). Three open ended questions captured information about how the video could be useful for the Latino community, what they liked the most from the video, and suggestions for improvement. Data was entered in SPSS version 25. We used descriptive statistics to analyze the survey, and content analysis to summarize the feedback from the open-ended questions. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Participants (n = 31) had an average age of 46 years (SD=16.99), all self-identified as Hispanic or Latinos, most were female (90.3%), and worked as patient navigators (29%) or community outreach workers (25.8%). The video’s general acceptability was very high. Participants reported high ratings for overall satisfaction, how much they liked the video, enjoyed it, and considered it to be interesting (all means >9.6, range 1-10). Most participants strongly agreed or agreed that the length was adequate (80.7%), that the information presented was very helpful (100%), that the video could be useful for the Latina community (96.8%), and that they would share the video with women at-risk of HBOC (100%). The highest endorsed channels for dissemination were Facebook (90.3) and YouTube (87.1%). The highest endorsed settings were community centers (100%), churches (96.8%), and hospitals (80.6%). Most participants (90.3%) considered that the best context to watch the video would be with relatives, followed by watching with other women at-risk of HBOC (71.0%), friends (71.0%), and lastly by oneself (41.9%) DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: This study represents a multidisciplinary approach to intervention development that aims to reduce well-documented knowledge gaps and disparities in the use of GCRA among at-risk Latinas. A culturally targeted video has the potential to reach underserved populations with low literacy and English proficiency and it can be widely disseminated. The video was well received by community health workers who reported high acceptability. These findings are promising given that community health workers could play a key role in the dissemination of the video if it is proven to be efficacious.


2020 ◽  
pp. 104365962090283
Author(s):  
Jessica L. Lenderts ◽  
Sarah J. Hoffman ◽  
Jaci Stitch

Introduction: While the many health vulnerabilities and challenges experienced by refugees have been previously documented, few studies have addressed the strengths-focused response strategies that women refugees, in particular, engage to navigate health systems and experiences associated with displacement. Our study attempts to document this among members of one group, the Karen, who represent a significant proportion of refugees resettled in the United States over the past decade. The purpose of this study was to explore how a sample of resettled Karen refugee women construct meaning around health, particularly in the context of cultural values, community, and migration. Methodology: This research took place in a series of ethnographic case studies documenting experiences of resilience, identity construction, and mothering among Karen refugee women from Burma. Data were collected through participant interviews with 12 Karen refugee women living in the United States. Interviews were transcribed, coded, and analyzed to identify themes relating to culturally influenced and newly emerging perceptions of health, identity, motherhood, and migration. Results: Participants identified correlates of doing, such as the ability to work and physical energy, as positively related to health, while the inability to do things was negatively related to health. Personal health also encompassed the health of family and community. Discussion: Women in this sample drew on broad, culturally informed ways of being to explain their health experiences. Implications of these findings are presented regarding how organizations and health providers can approach their work with refugees in culturally informed and relevant ways.


1989 ◽  
Vol 79 (8) ◽  
pp. 1051-1052
Author(s):  
A R Meyers ◽  
S Lett ◽  
D Grigg-Saito ◽  
C Sabati

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellyn R. Mulcahy ◽  
Carla Buchheit ◽  
Elyse Max ◽  
Suzanne R. Hawley ◽  
Aimee S. James

Abstract Objective To partner with and understand the health of Somali Bantu refugee women, small group sessions were designed and conducted using a community-based collaborative action research (CBCAR) approach. Health topics identified by this community were presented in 42 sessions with eleven women. Follow-up individual interviews with the women were used to ask questions about health experiences and plan for future health education. The objective of this qualitative study was to provide refugee women with knowledge to help them adjust to new health challenges in the United States, and to share personal narratives in a safe environment. Results The process of sharing health information with the women resulted in a collaborative exchange of culture and community. Individual interviews allowed women to voice their opinions outside of the influence of their community elders. CBCAR is an effective tool to involve refugee communities, and other populations small in number, in addressing their unique health challenges. Results from this study demonstrated that small group sessions and a CBCAR approach can be effective in sharing knowledge within small communities of refugee women. Findings from the study will assist in the future planning of health education programs for refugee women and their families in this community.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (101) ◽  
pp. 288-310
Author(s):  
Ashar Johnson Khokhar ◽  
Yaar Muhammad

The textbook is an important and powerful tool used by the state to reproduce the social and cultural habits of a group, most often, of the majority group’s social and cultural imaginations. The habitus produces and instills the world-view about society, the social and cultural values that a state valorized and would like pupils to internalize and make it part of their world-view. This study analyzes the English textbook published by the state textbook boards (Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Sindh) for the academic year 2018-2019 for pupils of classes four to eight. The textbook content was analyzed using the Qualitative Content Analysis method. The content of 15 textbooks was digitized (scanned and made readable) to electronically categorized the text into categories using Nvivo 12 Plus software. The analysis revealed that the content is focused on developing and promoting Islamic habitus through stories weaved around family, making it a core component of a Muslim country. The family members practiced Islamic values, social and cultural, not only through their everyday lives at home, in school, and at other public places but also within their community through the celebration of cultural and religious festivals. The textbooks presented the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and his family’s life as an ideal life to be lead by all, whether Muslims or non-Muslims. The textbook highlighted the ‘good,’ the ‘bad,’ valorizing the former and stigmatizing the latter to encourage pupils to develop an Islamic world-view. The textbooks fail to look into the micro-level national habitus, that is, portraying the habitus of its minorities, ethnic and religious, as the content did not integrate their habitus into the national habitus of Pakistan, making it the habitus of the majority. The current fast globalizing world needed to be presented to pupils a world-view, and this required, broadening the scope of textbook content to make it reflective of true Pakistani habitus aligned and rooted in the humane global world-view.


This chapter shows how definitions and assumptions about information and communication technology must be grounded in prevailing rhetorical and cultural traditions. It shows how much media research in the United States presupposes strong U.S. cultural values, including its legal traditions, the English language, and eight common human thresholds of interaction. It also show how each rhetoric and cultural tradition fit, remediate, and have distinct uses and timing for the information and communication technologies. Its purpose it to help professional communicators understand the use and forms of communication media appropriately around the world.


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-37
Author(s):  
Julie Choi ◽  
Ulrike Najar

Reports on refugee and migrant women in Australia show these women have low literacy in their first language, limited English language abilities, and minimal formal schooling. With major funding cuts to the adult migrant education sector and persistent public ‘deficit views’ of immigrant and refugee’s levels of literacy, approaches to teaching and learning in this sector require flexible views of language that embrace plurilingualism as a valuable resource within and outside of the socially-orientated ESL classroom. In this article, we present and discuss our findings from a study in which we co-taught English to immigrant and refugee women in a housing estate in Melbourne, Australia, and investigated the effects of a plurilingual view on the women’s English language learning experience and communication skills. Drawing on recorded classroom dialogues, observation notes, and worksheets produced by the women, we demonstrate the extraordinary plurilingual resourcefulness immigrant and refugee women bring to the challenge of learning to communicate in English. Our aim is not to promote a particular teaching approach, but to suggest the value of ongoing critical reflection on the underpinning ideas of plurilingualism for immigrant and refugee learner groups such as those we experienced in our own classroom interactions.


Author(s):  
Vera Joanna Burton ◽  
Betsy Wendt

An increasingly large number of children receiving education in the United States public school system do not speak English as their first language. As educators adjust to the changing educational demographics, speech-language pathologists will be called on with increasing frequency to address concerns regarding language difference and language disorders. This paper illustrates the pre-referral assessment-to-intervention processes and products designed by one school team to meet the unique needs of English Language Learners (ELL).


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