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Health Beliefs and Barriers to Healthcare of Rohingya Refugees

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Abstract

In recent years, over 1,000 Rohingya families have been resettled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin from areas where they faced trauma and health disparities. To better understand their health beliefs and barriers to healthcare, we conducted a qualitative study with ten community health workers and stakeholders serving the Milwaukee Rohingya community. Interviews were transcribed, coded, and analyzed. Themes included: 1) health is defined as being able to meet basic needs of the family/community; 2) prior and existing mistrust and fear of systems of authority impact healthcare seeking behavior; 3) past-trauma negatively impacts physical and mental health; 4) religion and spirituality influence beliefs about illness, recovery, and wellbeing; 5) linguistic, cultural, and educational barriers impact access, quality of care, and understanding of disease. These results begin to address the significant gap in our knowledge of the health beliefs and needs of the local Rohingya community and underscore the need for tailored interventions.

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Data Availability

De-identified transcripts of interviews will be provided upon request.

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Funding

Funding was provided by the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment and the Medical College of Wisconsin Cancer Center to the senior author, Melinda Stolley, PhD.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine and Cancer Center, Medical College of Wisconsin, 8701 W Watertown Plank Rd, Milwaukee, WI, 53226, US

    Shabi Haider, Aniya Maheen, Moiz Ansari & Melinda Stolley

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  1. Shabi Haider
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  2. Aniya Maheen
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  3. Moiz Ansari
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  4. Melinda Stolley
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Contributions

Shabi Haider and Aniya Maheen developed the study protocol and conducted the interviews for this qualitative study. Mr. Haider, Ms. Maheen, and Mr. Ansari analyzed the data. All four authors contributed equally to the writing of the manuscript. All work was conducted under the mentorship of Dr. Melinda Stolley.

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Correspondence to Melinda Stolley.

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Haider, S., Maheen, A., Ansari, M. et al. Health Beliefs and Barriers to Healthcare of Rohingya Refugees. J. Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities 10, 1560–1568 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-022-01342-2

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