Advancing the health of refugees by increasing knowledge of legal rights through digital tools

Gunisha Kaur  -  Weill Cornell, Anesthesiology
Natalie Bazarova  -  Agriculture & Life Sciences, Communication

Abstract:

Refugees in the US are decreasing their engagement with healthcare providers and systems. Our preliminary investigations determined that such disengagement may be due to a misunderstanding of legal rights, such as the new Public Charge Rule, which threatens immigration status if public benefits (e.g. Medicaid) are utilized. A major gap in our ability to maintain engagement of refugees with healthcare is that we lack tools to inform them about their legal rights and counter false narratives around detention, family separation, and deportation. Utilizing technology that has been effective in our previous work to improve the health of vulnerable populations may help fill this gap. The objectives of this application are to adapt our evidence-based model of healthcare disengagement by refugees in the US and to design novel data-driven digital tools to increase their participation. The central hypothesis, based on our strong preliminary research, is that a knowledge gap regarding legal rights is a major contributing factor. Our rationale for this research is to generate formative data for a clinical trial to test the efficacy of our digital intervention. The expected outcomes of this research are to: 1. Gain an evidence-based understanding of the barriers to refugee healthcare; 2. Develop digital tools to address these gaps; 3. Apply for extramural funding to investigate the impact of legal rights knowledge on the healthcare of refugees.

Grant Type:
Multi-Investigator Seed Grant
Year Funded:
2020