For Muna Saleh, the journey to raised perceive and deal with challenges round refugee well being began near dwelling. The rising third-year Virginia Commonwealth College Ph.D. scholar had seen how the wants differ from different populations, each as a medical social employee and in her own residence rising up.
“I’m a refugee myself, however I got here to the U.S. once I was a 12 months outdated,” Saleh stated. “Nonetheless, I’ve had that lived expertise. I’m in the neighborhood, and I see, first-hand, the challenges.”
Whereas in graduate college for her Grasp of Social Work diploma, she seen how pervasive the well being disparities have been.
“I grew annoyed as a result of loads of the literature I used to be studying was speaking so much about individualizing the issue of why some refugees expertise these disparities in well being, and never very a lot of it has been researched – nor has it been used to contextualize a few of the structural components which might be concerned in refugee well being,” Saleh stated.
So, when she determined to hitch the Ph.D. in Social Work program at VCU’s College of Social Work, she was set on in search of methods to enhance the well being and well-being of refugees resettling within the U.S. She has since earned a number of nationwide awards to help her analysis.
Throughout the 2022-23 college 12 months, the Robert Wooden Johnson Basis named Saleh one in all 40 nationwide Well being Coverage Analysis Students, a aggressive interdisciplinary award that features mentoring, networking, specialised workshops and funding of $30,000 for as much as 4 years. She was additionally one in all 10 college students within the nation chosen as a doctoral scholar coverage fellow for a fellowship collectively sponsored by the Council on Social Work Schooling (CSWE), the Society for Social Work and Analysis (SSWR) and the Group for the Development of Doctoral Schooling in Social Work (GADE).
The awards are prestigious, however for Saleh, the chance to be taught from consultants and inform policymaking is all within the service of advocating for her neighborhood.
“I wished to analysis extra about community-based participatory analysis, how communities see their very own capability to grow to be resilient of their resettlement course of and the way they will inform coverage afterward down the street, since loads of their voices are at the moment overlooked,” Saleh stated.
The collective impression of trauma
Saleh grew up in Rochester, Minnesota, a first-generation Somali American in one of many largest resettlement communities of Somali refugees within the U.S. The challenges related to resettlement – studying a brand new language, gaining employment, being other than pals and family again dwelling – have been ones many adults round her have been coping with, however their impression on their – and their households’ – well-being was hardly ever mentioned.
“Rising up in a refugee family, nestled in a bigger refugee neighborhood, it sort of turned a norm, a few of the ways in which trauma introduced itself,” Saleh stated. “I by no means knew the time earlier than migration, however post-migration, there have been individuals who have been actually scuffling with their psychological and bodily well being, and there was a shared collective, identity-based trauma. And even the way in which that trauma was taught to me rising up, it was very individualized – discrete occasions occurring to you – and there’s not loads of discuss these collective traumas and their relationship with bodily well being.”
After incomes bachelor’s levels in sociology and political science from the College of Minnesota, Saleh labored in quite a lot of roles, together with as a toddler safety employee and psychological well being social employee. She earned her M.S.W. from her alma mater, finishing her medical coaching and gaining medical expertise in an internship on the Mayo Clinic. She seen that many individuals from her neighborhood have been presenting to hospitals with the identical points.
“In my work in medical settings, I noticed that loads of refugees would use the hospital companies or emergency companies for issues that shouldn’t have been emergencies, and there weren’t any [clear] medical causes for them presenting to the hospital. However what we find out about trauma and therapeutic is that, loads of instances, that trauma can manifest in bodily ache, and it will possibly grow to be somatic,” Saleh stated. “Individuals would current to the emergency room for these complaints, and repair suppliers wouldn’t know what to do with them.”
As a social employee, she would work with these sufferers to attach them with companies in the neighborhood. She seen that many resettlement companies have been specializing in providing companies that always lined solely a small portion of refugees’ expertise.
“Refugees don’t simply go to refugee settlement companies for his or her companies: They use hospitals, they use psychological well being clinics, they use faculties,” Saleh stated. “They use loads of completely different applications [where staff] don’t perceive the experiences of refugees and a few of the constraints which might be distinctive to them that they’re dealing with with the resettlement coverage.”
She began to assume: “How will we merge all of those companies collectively so that they have a seamless service supply? And that promotes what the Robert Wooden Johnson Basis would name a ‘tradition of well being.’”
Selling a tradition of well being was a serious motive Saleh utilized to the muse’s analysis students program, as a automobile to translate her analysis into coverage and observe.
“For me, the impression that I’d hope to have is re-envisioning or reimagining a refugee resettlement program that facilities well being and well-being – as a result of proper now it’s an economic-focused one, so it simply pushes an ‘employment first, self-sufficiency first’ mannequin. It’s very clear reduce – it doesn’t cover it – that that’s the aim of the resettlement coverage,” Saleh stated. “What if we reframe that as ‘well being first’ or ‘well-being first’? How would that look, and the way would companies then be designed to push that aim?”
An ongoing dedication to fairness
Denise Burnette, Ph.D., Samuel S. Wurtzel Endowed College Chair in Social Work and professor in VCU’s College of Social Work, stated Saleh’s work as a well being coverage analysis fellow and because the doctoral scholar coverage fellow for CSWE, SSWR and GADE displays her rising management in social work working towards fairness and advocating for her neighborhood. Burnette famous that Saleh is amongst a number of doctoral college students, together with classmates Aaron Kemmerer and Matt Morgan, who previously 12 months have earned nationwide awards for his or her give attention to bettering entry and advancing fairness.
“Our Ph.D. program goals to arrange a various scholar physique for analysis and academic management in and past the social work career,” stated Burnette, who serves as director of VCU’s Ph.D. in Social Work program and president of the nationwide chapter of GADE. “Our college students are our biggest useful resource and our best emissaries. Muna and her friends’ dedication to excellence, fairness and impression are constantly mirrored of their coursework and program milestones, and we’re very proud to see these strengths more and more acknowledged by extremely aggressive exterior grants and awards.”
As Saleh enters her third 12 months within the Ph.D. program, she hopes to share data gained from the fellowships along with her social work friends as they deal with social challenges.
“I’m utilizing the work I’m doing in my analysis program to take a look at a few of the components related to collective well being outcomes —combination patterns, quite than particular person outcomes, which can higher enhance community-level well-being — in addition to well being coverage suggestions,” Saleh stated. “Having the ability to be in a room and in neighborhood with my [Robert Wood Johnson Foundation] cohort and mentors from the earlier ones, studying the talents of how you can disseminate very powerfully my analysis to policymakers, how you can use and determine the coverage actors in my analysis space and how you can maximize analysis impression – that’s what I’m hoping to remove from this expertise.”
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