Use of a Multidisciplinary Services Model to Treat Refugees and Survivors of Torture and Related Trauma in the United States and to Train Public Health Students: The Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights

APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Joya Lonsdale, BA, School of Public Health, Boston University, 715 Albany Street, Talbot Building, Boston, MA 02118, (401) 474-5618, joya@bu.edu and Linda Piwowarczyk, MD, MPH, Boston Medical Center, The Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights, 1 Boston Medical Center Place, Dowling 7, Boston, MA 02118.

This presentation focuses on the services, history, nature, form, structure, and research agenda of the Boston Center of Refugee Health and Human Rights (BCRHHR) of Boston Medical Center (BMC), a multidisciplinary, inner-city hospital-based program located in Boston, which cares for refugees and survivors of torture and related trauma from all over the world. BCRHHR embodies the mission of BMC to provide “consistently excellent and accessible health services to all in need of care, regardless of status and ability to pay.” BCRHHR offers an innovative model of outpatient care, providing comprehensive medical, mental health, and dental care—coordinated with legal and social services—to over 300 individuals from 67 countries each year. Interpreter services are available for over 30 languages to aid in the healing journey of each patient and their families. The Center's multidisciplinary service model includes primary health care for adults and children, mental health services for adults and children, referrals for medical specialties and neuropsychiatric evaluations, dental evaluations, evaluations of persons in detention, legal services, social services, creative therapies, and vocational rehabilitation. Providers perform medical and psychological affidavits documenting the effects of torture and persecution for those seeking asylum. BCRHHR offers donated new clothing; access to the BMC Food Pantry; and community support groups, including a Creative Expressions Group, Men's Group, and Women's Dinner Group. Presenters also discuss how a U.S.-based program serving refugees can be used for the education of public health students to prepare them for international work.

Learning Objectives:

Learning objectives

1) Explain how the multidisciplinary collaboration of physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, lawyers, dentists, vocational rehabilitation specialists, case managers, HIV specialists, and public health researchers is the gold standard for the treatment of torture survivors;
2) Describe the Boston Center of Refugee Health and Human Rights’s organizational structure; clinical services; research agenda; outcomes; and relationship to the legal system, hospital, and the communities BCRHHR serves;
3) Discuss the educational opportunities that a U.S. inner-city, publicly funded program serving refugees and other survivors of torture and related trauma can afford to public health students who want to work internationally in the future, including increasing cultural and linguistic competence.

Keywords: Refugees, Students

Related Web page: www.bcrhhr.org

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation

Providing Quality and Culturally Sensitive Multidisciplinary Health Care for Refugees and Immigrants

The 134th Annual Meeting & Exposition (November 4-8, 2006) of APHA