Enhancing refugees' current strengths in responding to disasters, delivering them tailored emergency training, strengthening relationships between refugee service providers and refugee communities, and advocating for refugees' socioeconomic capacity building should be considered.
Objective. The design and evaluation of an online global health course targeted for pharmacy and other undergraduates is presented. Design. Enrolled students represented nursing, health education, pharmacy and a variety of other disciplines. The course was designed as an entirely online one with no class meetings. The course consisted of eight modules addressing global health competencies and interprofessional education competencies. Readings, quizzes, study question and team projects were tailored to the goals of each module. Students worked in interprofessional teams for their team projects. Assessment. Assessments consisted of pre and post course perceptions and course evaluation. Rubrics were designed to evaluate team assignments and peer assessment of team participation.
Conclusion.Course was successful in enhancing perceptions of global health knowledge and understanding of roles and responsibilities of various health disciplines in addressing challenges of global health. No changes in teamwork perceptions were documented after completing the course. The overall course structure was successful in meeting course goals.
This pilot study aimed to reduce Bosnian refugees' vulnerability to and severity of mental disorders and sustain their mental health through adopting culturally appropriate and tailored physical activity. The study used the Community-Based Participatory Research approach and the quasi-experimental study design. A total of 35 participants in the intervention group received 12-week regular physical activity while 35 participants in the control group received 12-week educational materials concerning mental health. The effectiveness of the intervention was measured by the validated and culturally and linguistically competent instrument, Mental Health Inventory (MHI)-38. At the end of the study, both intervention and control groups demonstrated statistically significant improvement on the scales of MHI-38 either within or between groups. The study served as a non-clinical example to sustain, replicate, and expand the current intervention activities among the rest of the Bosnian community and other refugee/immigrant populations in the U.S. regarding their mental health well-being.
Mental health stigmas have been predominantly prevalent among different refugee populations resettled in both western and non-western countries. It significantly affects refugees' mental healthcare seeking behaviors. The current narrative review is to examine the anti-stigma strategies/ interventions/ programs that specifically address refugees' mental health stigma. Twenty-six out of 711 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, commentaries, reports, dissertations, and theses published in 2019 or prior in English were included in the final themes analysis. Results were organized using a socio-ecological multilevel framework (intrapersonal, interpersonal, institutional, community, and policy levels), which include increasing refugee individuals' awareness of mental health and improving their attitudes and perceptions towards mental disorders; enhancing interpersonal interactions between refugee patients and people who can encourage them to seek mental healthcare and can provide them with culturally competent mental health services; delivering mental healthcare through schools and ethnic organizations; developing community-based bottom-up interventions and mobilizing community assets to destigmatize and normalize mental illnesses within refugee communities; and advocating for a change of social norm towards mental illnesses and mental health treatment. There is a significant lack of studies designed to explore the effectiveness of anti-stigma approaches among refugees, which leads to an urgency of developing these studies and supporting evidence-based practice.
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