Displaced Children: "Adverse Childhood Experiences Amongst Refugees from the Horn of Africa: Influences on Development, Attachment, and Risk/Resilience"
by Segen Zeray
Fall 2024 Asylum Seeker Health
Refugees, asylum seekers, and forcibly displaced people face a wide range of severe challenges to their health and well-being. Social environments in countries of origin characterized by “structural violence” such as poverty, racism, and gender inequality pose demonstrable challenges to health and wellbeing, and one’s immigration status itself is a known determinant factor of health, radically shaping subjective experiences of health and wellbeing in the United States and other destination countries. The range of relevant cultural factors and processes is compelling, including risk factors, subjective experience and meaning of problem/illness, kin identification, conception of problems, community response, healing modalities, health care utilization, and sources of resilience. This Quarterly Conversation brings together a panel of professionals and scholars who work on advancing refugee wellbeing to address these and related issues.
The UC San Diego Global Health Program and Students for Global Health held our twenty first event in Quarterly Conversations in Global Health on Wednesday, February 28th, 2024, at the Great Hall of I-House! This quarter’s panel spoke onJourneys in Global Health.
Quarterly Conversations provides a forum for the Global Health community to come together to discuss relevant issues in the field from an interdisciplinary perspective and increase community interaction at UC San Diego.
Thank you to the community tables who participated in the event’s networking session: Students for Global Health, Global Health Reps, UCSD Partners in Health Engage, Refugee Health Unit: UC San Diego Center for Community Health, and Obstetrics (OB) Refugee and Asylee Case Navigation Program.
We would like to give our special appreciation to our event co-sponsors: UC San Diego Global Health Institute, UC San Diego Division of Social Sciences, UC San Diego Global Health Program, UC San Diego Center for Global Mental Health, UC San Diego Students for Global Health, and the UC San Diego International House.
If you missed our Fall Quarterly Conversation on Asylum Seeker Health, a recording of the event is available for you!
Panel Recap
We were delighted to have Dr. Thomas Csordas, Director of UC San Diego’s Global Health Program, moderating the event as our Master of Ceremonies.
Meghan Zavala
Data & Policy Analyst at AL Otro Lado, Master of Public Policy
Meghan Zavala is a Data & Policy Analyst with Al Otro Lado, based at the California-Mexico border. Al Otro Lado is a binational nonprofit organization that provides legal and humanitarian assistance to migrants, refugees, and deportees in Mexico and the US. Joining the Al Otro Lado team in July 2023, she closely collaborates with the Border Rights Project team, based in Tijuana, to improve program data management, analyze trends in the data to inform program improvement, and leverage data to promote advocacy for the rights of migrants on both sides of the border. She also led efforts to document the over 1,400 families separated by Border Patrol and the agency's practice of holding migrants in open-air detention sites (OADS) in San Diego from 2023-2024. Prior to working at Al Otro Lado, Meghan received a Master of Public Policy from UCSD's School of Global Policy and Strategy where she worked on migration and border policy issues while working for the Center for US-Mexico Studies at UCSD, the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), and the City of San Diego Office of Immigrant Affairs.
Dr. Kathleen Fischer
Medical Director for the Asylum Seeker Shelter, MD, MPH
Dr. Fischer is a Health Sciences Assistant Clinical Professor, Non-Salaried at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). She obtained her MD from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 1979 and completed a Residency in Internal Medicine there in 1985. She was also a graduate of the UCSD Preventive Medicine Residency in 1998 when she concurrently obtained an MPH in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from San Diego State University. She is board-certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine. Following a 26-year career in the U.S. Navy as a general internist, population health researcher, and medical director, she started a second career working for UCSD with displaced populations, including refugees and asylum seekers. She previously served 10 years as the Medical Director for the Refugee Health Assessment Program in San Diego, and currently serves as Medical Director for the Asylum Seekers Medical Screening and Stabilization Program. Additional interests include short-term medical mission trips throughout the world, but mostly to Ecuador, Ethiopia, and Niger.
Dr. Brenda K. Wilson
Assistant Teaching Professor for UCSD's Department of Ethnic Studies and Global Health Program, PhD
Brenda K. Wilson, PhD is an Assistant Teaching Professor at UC San Diego's Department of Ethnic Studies and Global Health Program (joint appointment). Her research and teaching focus primarily on health disparities, with an emphasis on structural violence, the role of power, and the impacts of social determinants on people's health. Dr. Wilson's methodology is ethnographic and qualitative and draws inspiration from the values of community-based participatory research. She has conducted photo-ethnographic fieldwork with Haitian migrant farmworkers in the Dominican Republic (2019) and with migrant farmworkers in India (2010) to examine how health inequalities are experienced and produced through historical, social, ecological, and political-economic factors. Her current research program ethnographically examines the health and geographic trajectories of asylum seekers and migrants from around the world who are crossing the US-Mexico border. Her other areas of teaching and research include precarious employment, critical race and gender studies, postcolonial science and technology studies, climate change and environmental health, short-term experiences in global health (STEGH), and social justice pedagogy and curricula. Dr. Wilson has her PhD in the Medical Humanities from the University of Texas Medical Branch, MA in Natural Resources and Environmental Management from the University of Manitoba, a BS in Human Biology from Texas State University, and completed her postdoctoral training at the Global Health Program at UC San Diego.