Piloting a Women's Health Assessment Among Refugees in Salt Lake City, UT: Experiences, Barriers, and Gaps

Background: The health of refugee women after settlement in a new country, can be adversely or positively affected by individual, interpersonal, community, and organizational factors. As the number of forcibly displaced women continues to grow due to conflict, persecution, violence, natural disasters, and under-resourced health systems in their countries, so too does the need to provide culturally appropriate and linguistically accurate Women's healthcare in the United States (Hawkins, 2021). Objectives: To identify the unique health needs of refugee women and to gather data that will inform future strategies used to address those needs. Methods: Developed and implement a human-centered needs assessment to better understand the experiences, barriers, and gaps in Women's Health among Refugees in Salt Lake City, Utah. Convenience sampling was used to recruit 6 female Refugees, from 3 different countries of origin, between the ages of 18-55, who arrived in the United States within the last 5 years for the initial pilot study. The responses were reviewed using a content analysis to generate themes, and gaps in knowledge, to inform best practices for the roll out full-scale assessment that will cover a much larger sample size. Results: Three themes were identified that contribute to women's health inequities in Salt Lake City: (1) low-level health literacy, (2) communication barriers, and, (3) stigma surrounding women's health issues. The responses also provided the International Refugee Committee (IRC) Health Promotion Team with valuable data used to rephrase survey questions, establish facilitator notes for topic framing, and create a staff toolkit to ensure consistency in the protocol and process. Conclusion: The preliminary findings of this pilot assessment guided improvements in the format of the needs assessment and identified preliminary gaps and barriers in Refugee Women's healthcare in Salt Lake City.