Racism in public health services: A research agenda.

Despite racism and its impact on health inequities being increasingly studied in health care settings, racism in public health services has so far been neglected in public health research. Studying racism in public health services provides many opportunities to explore the relationship between racism and health protection. We identify several research themes to be explored on (1) non-stigmatizing and community-driven risk communication, (2) surveillance by public health authorities of racialized minority groups, (3) racism experiences in everyday interactions with public health authorities, (4) legal consequences of encounters with public health authorities and (5) public health infrastructure, structural racism and the intersectionality of marginalization. Tackling these research themes will help to start building an evidence base on how racism interferes with equitable health protection and how to dismantle it.

Corrigendum: How Can Schools of Public Health Actively Promote Peace?

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/phrs.2021.1604459.].

How schools in Germany shape and impact the lives of adolescent refugees in terms of mental health and social mobility.

Schools are relevant settings for supporting refugee adolescents' mental health. As education and migration are important social determinants of health, we aim to integrate the qualitative findings of our mixed-methods study into a broader discussion regarding the role of schools and the potential effects on refugee adolescents' lives and mental health, as well as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we present the findings of school-based actors' (i.e., teachers and school psychologists) perception of refugee adolescents' access to mental health care. The interviews highlight the importance of schools and social activities as main stabilizers and sources of support for refugee adolescents' mental health and the role trusting school-parent relationships play in mental health care help-seeking. Our data indicate that schools lack the resources to properly address these needs. However, these structural gaps are rooted into historical segregation and discrimination in the German educational system and left unaddressed, can increase stigma and intergenerational social inequalities, especially in connection to the COVID-19 pandemic. We conclude our article with a set of recommendations that could be relevant and implemented across different contexts to strengthen the role of the school setting in promoting the mental health and well-being of refugee adolescents.

Transformative Encounters: A Narrative Review of Involving People Living With HIV/AIDS in Public Health Teaching.

Objectives: To collate the experiences of involvement of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) in academic public health teaching to inform future public health education models involving people affected by long-term effects of other pandemics. Our goal is to describe interventions in a way that makes them accessible to potential public health teachers hoping to adapt patient involvement paradigms in their teaching of chronic illness brought on by infectious diseases. Methods: Narrative review based on a literature search in PubMed and Google Scholar up to September 2021. Fifteen articles that contained a description of a health educational intervention on HIV/AIDS that actively involved PLWHA were included. Results: Interventions either involved PLWHA as teachers and program/curriculum developers or incorporated experiential elements in which students have genuine contact with PLWHA. Creating safe spaces, recognizing PLWHA as experts, relating to each other differently were common transformative elements. Conclusion: Involving PLWHA in public health teaching have transformative and empowering outcomes, both for PLWHA and for learners. This finding should inform new teaching programs that will address the long-term effects of other pandemics such as COVID-19.

Health Care for Refugees in Europe: A Scoping Review.

BACKGROUND: Accessing and using health care in European countries pose major challenges for asylum seekers and refugees due to legal, linguistic, administrative, and knowledge barriers. This scoping review will systematically describe the literature regarding health care for asylum seekers and refugees in high-income European countries, and the experiences that they have in accessing and using health care. METHODS: Three databases in the field of public health were systematically searched, from which 1665 studies were selected for title and abstract screening, and 69 full texts were screened for eligibility by the main author. Of these studies, 44 were included in this systematic review. A narrative synthesis was undertaken. RESULTS: Barriers in access to health care are highly prevalent in refugee populations, and can lead to underusage, misuse of health care, and higher costs. The qualitative results suggest that too little attention is paid to the living situations of refugees. This is especially true in access to care, and in the doctor-patient interaction. This can lead to a gap between needs and care. CONCLUSIONS: Although the problems refugees and asylum seekers face in accessing health care in high-income European countries have long been documented, little has changed over time. Living conditions are a key determinant for accessing health care.

Asylum seeking and refugee adolescents' mental health service use and help-seeking patterns: a mixed-methods study.

Almost a third of all people who entered Germany to seek protection since 2010 were under the age of 18. Asylum-seeking and refugee (ASR) adolescents in Germany face reduced entitlements to healthcare and experience barriers in accessing mental healthcare, despite documented mental health needs. This mixed-methods study aims to describe the mental health needs and service use of ASR adolescents in Germany and identify the predictors of their help-seeking patterns. Here we report findings of cross-sectional data collected between February 2019 and November 2020 in schools and refugee accommodations in three German federal states. Our subsample consists of ASR between the ages of 11 and 18, coming from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq (N = 216). Cross-sectional data are supplemented by semi-structured interviews with nine mental health professionals in one region of the study. Our findings reveal an underutilization of mental health services relative to the emotional difficulties reported. Perceived and experienced access barriers, age, and externalizing and internalizing symptoms predict different help-seeking patterns. Psychotherapy-related social resources, as well as reporting of emotional difficulties, are predictors of actual or intended psychotherapeutic service utilization. Based on our quantitative and qualitative findings, we highlight the need for widespread, accessible, and low-threshold mental health initiatives designed to work with ASR adolescents, for additional assistance in navigating the mental healthcare system, as well as for support to important people in ASR adolescents' lives who fill the gap between mental health needs and accessible mental healthcare services.

Women's voices on social media: the advent of feminist epidemiology?

BACKGROUND: Social media have in recent years challenged the way in which research questions are formulated in epidemiology and medicine, and in particular when it comes to women's health. They have contributed to the emergence of 'new' public health topics (e.g. gynaecological and obstetric violence, long-Covid), the unearthing of testimonials of medical injustice, and in some cases, the creation of new evidence and changes in medical practice. MAIN TEXT: From a theoretical and methodological perspective, we observe two powerful mechanisms at play on social media, which can facilitate the implementation of feminist epidemiological research and address so-called anti-feminist bias: social media as a 'third' space and the power of groups. Social media posts can be seen as inhabiting a third space, akin to what is said off the record or in-between doors, at the end of a therapy session. Researchers somehow miss the opportunity to use the third spaces that people occupy. Similarly, another existing space that researchers are seldom interested in are peer-groups. Peer-groups are the ideal terrain to generate bottom-up research priorities. To some extent, their on-line versions provide a safe and emancipatory space, accessible, transnational, and inclusive. We would argue that this could bring feminist epidemiology to scale. CONCLUSION: Given the emancipatory power of social media, we propose recommendations and practical implications for leveraging the potential of online-sourced feminist epidemiology at different stages of the research process (from design to dissemination), and for increasing synergies between researchers and the community. We emphasise that attention should be paid to patriarchal sociocultural contexts and power dynamics, the mitigation of risks for political recuperation and stigmatisation, and the co-production of respectful discourse on studied populations.

Settling Ulysses: An Adapted Research Agenda for Refugee Mental Health.

Refugees and asylum seekers arriving in Europe during the 2015/2016 wave of migration have been exposed to war conditions in their country of origin, survived a dangerous journey, and often struggled with negative reception in transit and host countries. The mental health consequence of such forced migration experiences is named the Ulysses syndrome. Policies regarding the right to residency can play an important role in reducing mental health symptoms. We propose that facilitating a sense of belonging should be seen as one important preventive mental healthcare intervention. A refugee mental health agenda needs to take into account the interplay between refugees' and asylum seekers' mental health, feeling of belonging, and access to healthcare. We urge for policies to restore individuals' dignity, and recognize the right for homecoming to parallel the mythology of Ulysses.