Facilitating Health Communication With Immigrant Refugee And Migrant Populations Through The Use Of Health Literacy And Community Engagement Strategies

The increasingly diverse ethnic composition of the United States population has created a profound and ongoing demographic shift, and public health and health care organizations face many challenges as they move to address and adapt to this change. To better understand how the public health and health care communities can meet the challenges of serving an increasingly diverse population, the Roundtable on Health Literacy conducted a public workshop on facilitating health communication with immigrant, refugee, and migrant populations through the use of health literate approaches. The goal of the workshop was to identify approaches that will enable organizations that serve these ethnically and culturally diverse populations in a manner that allows all members of these communities to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and the services needed to make appropriate health and personal decisions. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

This volume expands conversations about participatory, community-engaged, and action-oriented research that inspires social change. The authors contend that long-term community partnerships, inspired by solidarity and characterized by equality and reciprocity, result in a deep understanding of community concerns and increase the likelihood that research findings will have an impact on both the community partners and the broader society. Such research relationships, the authors maintain, are best understood as accompaniment. This book recognizes the potential as well as constraints of conceptualizing research as accompaniment and emphasizes that this approach is both a continuum and a process. Suitable for students and scholars of ethnographic and qualitative methods (and professionals using those methods, such as those in non-government organizations), it will appeal to those interested in research with communities in a wide variety of social science and other disciplines, including anthropology, nursing, and public health, amongst others.

This book analyzes important international cases of immigrant and refugee health from diverse communication perspectives, providing theoretical frames and effective recommendations for designing future health communication campaigns and interventions for global health promotion. Internationally renowned scholars elucidate the reality of health communication situations that immigrants and refugees experience in host countries around the globe and examine how national and global health risk situations, including the COVID-19 pandemic, affect immigrant and refugee health during difficult health circumstances. Offering effective health communication strategies for promoting immigrant and refugee health, the book also provides lessons learned from past and present health communication campaigns, responses of diverse communities, and governmental policies. This book with many case studies from major host countries on different continents, this book will be of interest to anyone researching or studying in the areas of health communication, public health, international relations, public administration, nursing, and social work.

Implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 will result in significant changes to the U.S. health care system. Among its many provisions, the ACA will extend access to health care coverage to millions of Americans who have been previously uninsured. Many of the newly eligible health insurance consumers will be individuals of low health literacy, some speakers of English and others more comfortable using languages other than English. Health insurance terms such as "deductible," "co-insurance," and "out-of-pocket limit" are difficult to communicate even to those with moderate-to-high levels of health literacy and so health exchanges will face challenges as they attempt to communicate to the broader community. In addition to having to convey some of these basic, and yet complex, principles of insurance, state exchanges will be attempting to adapt to the many changes to enrollment and eligibility brought about by ACA. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) convened the Roundtable on Health Literacy that brings together leaders from the federal government, foundations, health plans, associations, and private companies to discuss challenges facing health literacy practice and research and to identify approaches to promote health literacy in both the public and private sectors. The roundtable sponsored a workshop in Washington, DC, on July 19, 2011, that focused on ways in which health literacy can facilitate state health insurance exchange communication with potential enrollees. The roundtable's workshop focused on four topics: (1) lessons learned from existing state insurance exchanges; (2) the impact of state insurance exchanges on consumers; (3) the relevance of health literacy to health insurance exchanges; and (4) current best practices in developing materials and communicating with consumers. Facilitating State Health Exchange Communication Through the Use of Health Literate Practices summarizes the presentations and discussion that occurred during the workshop. The report provides an overview of health insurance exchanges, presents evidence on the extent to which consumers understand underlying health insurance concepts, and describes the relevancy of health literacy to health insurance reform and how health literacy interventions can facilitate the implementation of health insurance reforms. The report also provides a review of best practices in developing materials and communicating with consumers, and concludes with reflections on the workshop presentations and discussions by members of the roundtable and its chair. Further information is provided in the appendixes, the workshop agenda (Appendix A), workshop speaker biosketches (Appendix B), and testimony provided by the organization America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) (Appendix C).

This book engages a key question facing governments and similar institutions in countries of immigration or emigration: how should these governments and institutions communicate with immigrants so that they will listen to and act on their messages? Drawing on original research with Mexican emigrants in New York and the Mexican government's Seguro Popular health care program, the authors examine the ways in which governments integrate migrants into diasporic political, medical, educational, and other systems, and how migrant-sending countries communicate with their emigrants abroad. In analyzing how these efforts fail or succeed, this book presents strategies and policy recommendations that many governments and institutions can use to engage their citizens or clients ethically and effectively. Offering a valuable approach to the study of race, migration, and public policy, this book will be of key importance to researchers and graduate students in public health, sociology, marketing and business, political science, Latinx studies, and international communication.

This book brings together a diverse range of scholars and practitioners working at the nexus of health literacy work in libraries. This engaging resource presents a practical and accessible guide to meet the needs of librarians, health literacy researchers, and information and service professionals seeking to address health literacy needs in their communities. Through chapters offering multiple perspectives on the topic, the book covers specific types of literacy, such as mental health literacy and health insurance literacy, as well as timely applications, such as health misinformation. Chapters in this compilation also feature health literacy and the following communities: LGBTQ+, Latinx, Black, and Immigrants, Refugees, and Migrants. The book is full of numerous examples, thoughtful advice, and discussions addressing the challenges of working with adolescents and young adults, older adults, and parent caregivers of children with rare diseases. Each chapter starts with “Key Messages'' synthesizing the main points and concludes with a proposed set of “Discussion Questions'' to inspire further reflection and to facilitate health literacy conversations. Overall, the up-to-date coverage of health literacy in various contexts explored throughout the book will be beneficial to a range of stakeholders interested in health literacy work.

This review explores how the health needs of refugees and migrants may differ from those of host populations, requiring culturally sensitive and effective care that recognizes the impacts of migration and forced displacement on physical and mental health. The review draws on grey literature and peer-reviewed research to identify key findings on refugee and migrant health across different contexts and clinical settings as well as the barriers and challenges that may prevent refugees and migrants from accessing health care. The focus on common health needs of refugee and migrant populations across the life-course is designed to complement the development of the Global Competency Standards for the effective provision of health services to refugees and migrants. Health workers providing care to refugees and migrants should be aware of how the migration experience – which can involve poor transit conditions, restrictive entry and integration policies, exclusion and acculturation stress – influences the health status of individuals and their health needs.

Social changes in European societies place migration and cultural diversity on the European political agenda. The European initiative Migrant Friendly Hospitals (MFH) aims to identify, develop and evaluate models of effective interventions. It has the following objectives: To strengthen the role of hospitals in promoting the health of migrants and ethnic minorities in the European Union and to improve hospital services for these groups. This report reviews models of effective intervention in the medical literature and provides the background information needed to enable partner hospitals taking part in the MFH initiative to select and implement suitable interventions. The interventions reviewed in this study are grouped in four areas: Communication, Responsiveness Empowerment of migrant and minority patients and communities. Monitoring of the health of migrants and minorities and the health care they receive. [Ed.]