Abstract
Liberation Medicine: Strategies for health worker activism from the border to immigrant detention centers, the exam room and the classroom
Jennifer Kasper, MD, MPH1, Clyde (Lanford) Smith, MD, MPH, DTM&H2, Sarah Smith, MPH, MA3, Anna Landau, MD, MPH, DTM&H4, Diego Pina Lopez, MSW5, Matthew Anderson, MD, MSc6, Chanelle Diaz, MD6 and Jyoti Puvvula, MD7
(1)Harvard Medical School, Jamaica Plain, MA, (2)Brigham and Women's Hospital, Decatur, GA, (3)Nevada Partnership for Training, Reno, NV, (4)Banner - University of Arizona Medical Group, Tucson, AZ, (5)Casa Alitas Program, Tucson, AZ, (6)Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx, NY, (7)UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, Harbor City, CA
APHA's 2019 Annual Meeting and Expo (Nov. 2 - Nov. 6)
Transnational and supranational economic forces are forms of structural violence that exacerbate inequity, increase human rights abuses, and drive immigration. Nowhere is this more evident than at the US-Mexico border. Economic refugees and asylum applicants seek survival in the US. Injustices at the border abound. There has been a dramatic rise in the number of immigrants detained by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with more than 400,000 people detained annually. The negative health effects of criminalization of immigration, increase in fear of and actual detention, family separation, mass release and placement of asylum seekers in temporary shelters, and mass deportation, extend beyond the individuals detained to their families and communities, resulting in collective trauma. It is necessary to connect practitioners to community spaces where grassroots movements are organizing, to gain insights into how to mitigate the negative health effects of current policies on our patients and communities. We will discuss education interventions implemented in various cities for social workers, public health professionals, and medical residents that focus on immigration detention health advocacy, border injustice, and sanctuary practices and policies. Through this roundtable, participants will understand mass detention and deportation as a public health issue and will be trained in social activism. Clinicians and public health professionals have a unique opportunity to promote healing through liberation medicine praxis in settings of direct patient and community care and education sessions during outpatient visits, hospitalizations and community health promotion activities.
Advocacy for health and health education Other professions or practice related to public health