Univerity At Buffalo - UB Now: Social Connectedness In Times Of COVID-19 Focus Of Refugee Health Summit

Press release from the University at Buffalo - UB Now:

June 22, 2021

COVID-19 UPDATES  •  6/21/2021

A broad coalition of community leaders and researchers in Buffalo will convene virtually on June 24 for the seventh annual WNY Refugee Health Summit. This year’s summit will highlight responses to pandemic-induced social isolation, focusing on partnerships that seek to improve educational environments, support mental health care and build culturally holistic care models.

Having fled war, persecution and torture, Buffalo’s population of people who arrived as refugees are revitalizing and diversifying Buffalo, yet challenges remain for both the city and its newest residents. As the United States has one of the most individualistic cultures in the world, people who arrived in the country as refugees may find the separation necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic even more jarring than those born in the U.S.

While the pandemic has left many disconnected, individuals and organizations in Buffalo have engaged the refugee community in various ways. Throughout the pandemic, innovative community partnerships, policies and programs have been implemented to support resettled people.

Co-produced by community and UB partners, the summit creates a transdisciplinary space for conversation among refugee communities, clinicians, resettlement agencies, community health workers, educators, researchers, students and municipal leaders.

The event, which runs from 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., will consist of two panels focused on responses to isolation employed by schools and mental health providers, respectively. Jill Koyama, a former faculty member in the UB Graduate School of Education who is now at Arizona State University’s Teachers College, will speak during the panel on school responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Karen Waugaman, director of the Teacher Resource Center in the Niagara Falls City School District, will also be a guest speaker on the panel.

Other panelists include Hana Mirach, a refugee with family roots in Eritrea who serves as director of the resettlement and refugee school impact program at Journey’s End Refugee Services in Buffalo, and Saw Meh, a master’s student in UB’s Graduate School of Education who was born in Kayah State and raised in a Thailand refugee camp before migrating to the U.S. in 2011.

The education panel will be followed by a workshop to identify actionable changes in Buffalo and Western New York.

The full agenda and speaker bios are available on the website of the UB Community for Global Health Equity, which is co-sponsoring the summit along with the Office of Global Health Initiatives in the School of Public Health and Health Professions.

Organizers include representatives from Journey's End Refugee Services, Community for Global Health Equity, the Food Systems Planning and Healthy Communities Lab in UB’s School of Architecture and Planning, and the School of Public Health and Health Professions.

This press release was produced by the University at Buffalo - UB Now. The views expressed here are the author’s own.