Events
Bridging the Humanitarian, Peacebuilding, and Development Nexus: Building systems for Mental Health, Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) for Populations Affected by War, Forced Displacement, and Resettlement through an Implementation Science Lens
The Boston College School of Social Work’s Research Program on Children & Adversity (RPCA) and Trinity College Centre for Forced Migration Studies is pleased to announce our upcoming symposium in May 2024 in Dublin, Ireland. The symposium will feature in-person panel sessions focused on implementation science, MHPSS, and bridging the relief-to-development gap in post-conflict settings from key research institutions, community organizations, and international stakeholders such as UNICEF and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The symposium will feature keynote speakers, Drs. Fred Ssewamala and Mary McKay from Washington University at St. Louis, highlighting work in Uganda to bridge the relief to development gap and peacebuilding in post-conflict settings, and panelists from multiple organizations and disciplines, including Boston College and Trinity College faculty.
Boston College RPCA and Boston Children's Hospital's Trauma and Community Resilience Center puts together a webinar focused on refugee mental health.
This year’s theme is chosen with a focus on the inclusion of community health workers with lived experience as refugees and immigrants in the mental health systems for refugee children, families and adolescents. Following our event last year, which included a Community and Providers panel and a Policy and Systems panel, our team would like to shift focus on the value of non-specialist or peer delivery in closing the mental health treatment gap of resettled refugee communities in the United States and ways to best support the workers at the community, agency, and system levels. Although there is evidence that peer delivery of psychosocial and mental health promoting interventions within refugee, newcomer, and immigrant communities proves effective in addressing cultural barriers and mental health problems, the current mental health system does not have structures in place to support these workers on a professional level. Our aim with this event is to highlight the value of non-specialists with lived experience in the refugee and immigrant mental health field, explore the obstacles faced by these community health workers, and propose solutions to these barriers in order to strengthen the presence of these individuals in the mental health service system.