Search

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. The goals of the intervention were to address social determinants of health and build trust and connections with other mental health services in order to reduce mental health disparities among Afghan, Great Lakes Region African, and Iraqi refugee adults and to engage and retain refugees in trauma-focused treatment, if needed. Two cohorts completed the intervention between 2013 and 2015. Ninety-three adult refugees were randomly assigned to intervention or control group and completed four research interviews (pre-, mid-, and postintervention, and follow-up). Several challenges to conducting a community-based RCT emerged, including issues related to interviewer intervention to assist participants in the control group, diffusion of intervention resources throughout the small refugee communities, and staff and community concerns about the RCT design and what evidence is meaningful to demonstrate intervention effectiveness. These findings highlight important epistemological, methodological, and ethical challenges that should be considered when conducting community-based RCTs and interpreting results from them. In addition, several innovations were developed to address these challenges, which may be useful for other community-academic partnerships engaged in RCTs.

Highlights: Multilevel strengths‐based intervention decreases refugee distress and improves protective factors.Holistic focus on psychological, material, social, educational, and cultural needs is effective.High recruitment/retention rates support importance of non‐stigmatizing universal interventions.Refugee Well‐being Project (RWP) intervention reaches refugees unlikely to access formal mental health services.RWP circumvents typical barriers to services (stigma, trust, linguistic/cultural appropriateness). 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. The 6‐month multilevel, strengths‐based Refugee Well‐being Project (RWP) intervention brought together university students enrolled in a 2‐semester course and recently resettled refugees to engage in mutual learning and collaborative efforts to mobilize community resources and improve community and systems responsiveness to refugees. Data collected from 290 Afghan, Great Lakes African, Iraqi, and Syrian refugees at four time points over 12 months were used to test the effectiveness of RWP to reduce distress (depression and anxiety symptoms) and increase protective factors (English proficiency, social support, connection to home and American cultures). Intention‐to‐treat analyses using multilevel modeling revealed significant intervention effects for all hypothesized outcomes. Results provide evidence to support social justice approaches to improving refugee mental health. Findings have implications for refugees worldwide, and for other immigrant and marginalized populations who experience inequities in resources and disproportionate exposure to trauma/stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.'s (2006) model for the Afghan Symptom Checklist (ASCL) and conducted 18 semistructured qualitative interviews that attended to refugees' multiple settings; the impact of potentially traumatic events initially and postresettlement; and the experiences and impact of resettlement stressors. We tested the newly developed measures and existing ASCL with 280 recently resettled refugees (<3 years) from Afghanistan, the Great Lakes region of Africa, and Iraq to assess factor structure, reliability, and construct validity. We successfully replicated and adapted a process for creating culturally specific measures of distress to create reliable and valid scales that consider culturally and contextually specific distress among several groups of forcibly displaced people. Our results highlight the salience of individuals' social contexts and how they are manifested as idioms of distress, bringing together two key areas of research: the social construction of mental health and social determinants of mental health. These findings have implications for improving measurement of psychological distress and for developing multilevel interventions that are culturally resonant and address factors beyond the individual level. Public Policy Relevance Statement: Addressing the mental health of the rapidly increasing numbers of forcibly displaced people is urgently needed, and effective interventions require an accurate understanding of the sources and experiences of psychological distress. This study highlights a process for assessing culturally and contextually specific distress among three refugee groups and provides measures that can be used with Afghan, Great Lakes African, and Iraqi refugees in the United States. The symptoms of distress revealed in the newly created measures demonstrate the relevance of including contextually specific items that measure postresettlement stressors and the importance of multilevel and structural interventions that attend to social isolation, family separation, language barriers, and resource access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: A growing number of refugee groups are seeking care within the U.S. health care system for medical, psychological, and social needs. Research is limited in understanding refugee-specific conceptualizations of helping relationships and provider characteristics that improve interactions in health systems. This study aimed to identify provider characteristics that facilitate engagement and helpfulness in a refugee-specific population from refugee participant voices to inform future practices of health care clinics., Methods: Semi-structured interviews with refugee participants were conducted to assess 1) experiences moving on from difficult experiences, 2) engagement with the health system, and 3) provider characteristics that facilitated engagement and healing. Qualitative data were analyzed using a grounded theory approach., Results: An emergent theory was revealed on refugee-defined provider characteristics that facilitated healing and engagement in the health system. Providers who support an individual's story to be told, show awareness of barriers to accessing resources and prioritization of addressing barriers, maintain cultural humility, and demonstrate compassion, empathy, warmth, and openness toward patient engagement were the primary characteristics that facilitated engagement and healing., Conclusions: Utilization of engagement strategies by providers at the onset of treatment is critical to providing culturally sensitive health care. Nonspecific but essential provider characteristics are thought to improve relational dynamics, trust-building, and overall engagement in the U.S. health care system from the perspective of refugee participants., Competing Interests: Conflicts of Interest None., (© 2023 Advocate Aurora Health, Inc.)