Measuring culturally and contextually specific distress among Afghan, Iraqi, and Great Lakes African refugees.

Culturally and contextually valid measurement of psychological distress is critical, given the increasing numbers of forcibly displaced people and transnational migration. This study replicates an inductive process that elicited culturally specific expressions, understandings, and idioms of distress among Afghans to develop culturally specific measures of distress for Great Lakes Africans and Iraqis and expands this methodology to include a focus on the contexts of refugees resettled in the United States. To create the measures, we adapted Miller et al.

A Helping Hand Out of the River: Refugee Perspectives for Provider Engagement.

Purpose: A growing number of refugee groups are seeking care within the U.S. health care system for medical, psychological, and social needs.

Randomized Controlled Trial of a Multilevel Intervention to Address Social Determinants of Refugee Mental Health.

Understanding processes that support the well-being of the unprecedented numbers of forcibly displaced people throughout the world is essential. Growing evidence documents post-migration stressors related to marginalization as key social determinants of refugee mental health. The goal of this RCT was to rigorously test a social justice approach to reducing high rates of distress among refugees in the United States.

REFUGEE MENTAL HEALTH AND HEALING: UNDERSTANDING THE IMPACT OF POLICIES OF RAPID ECONOMIC SELF-SUFFICIENCY AND THE IMPORTANCE OF MEANINGFUL WORK.

Although refugees who are accepted for resettlement in a third country are guaranteed certain rights and experience safety from war and persecution, they face many mental health challenges. Using qualitative methods and constructivist grounded theory, we explored culturally-specific perspectives on trauma and recovery among Burundian, Congolese and Iraqi refugees resettled in the United States. Eighteen semi-structured interviews provided extensive data on the meaning of productivity and work, the ways in which they index normalcy and self-sufficiency, and how they create security that facilitates the healing process.

Challenges and Innovations in a Community-Based Participatory Randomized Controlled Trial.

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are a long-standing and important design for conducting rigorous tests of the effectiveness of health interventions. However, many questions have been raised about the external validity of RCTs, their utility in explicating mechanisms of intervention and participants' intervention experiences, and their feasibility and acceptability. In the current mixed-methods study, academic and community partners developed and implemented an RCT to test the effectiveness of a collaboratively developed community-based advocacy, learning, and social support intervention.