The health of refugee women after settlement in a new country, can be adversely or positively affected by individual, interpersonal, community, and organizational factors. While much of the previous literature highlights these factors individually, there is a lack of comprehensive synthesis regarding how the factors interact to influence the health of refugee women. We conducted a thematic analysis in our literature review to elucidate how providers can work with refugee women to prevent adverse health outcomes and intervene at multiple levels to improve their health outcomes after resettlement. We reviewed peer-reviewed literature from 2009 to 2019 from Google Scholar, JSTOR, Global Health, PubMed, CINAHL, Sociological Abstracts, and Social Service Abstracts, and also used citation chaining, to identify relevant information pertaining to refugee women’s health. The key terms used for our literature review were, health care, violence, social support, and mental health. In total, we included 52 articles, 3 books, and 8 other sources. We found that refugee women are vulnerable to violence during migration and typically have high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder. There were also concerns of secondary victimization by providers after resettlement. We also found that social support is an important factor for reducing isolation, and improving access to health care, as well as improving mental health outcomes. However, social support was often difficult to maintain, and was moderated by factors such as English language fluency. Health care was influenced by health literacy, cultural difference, communication concerns, and access issues. The findings suggest that at the individual and interpersonal levels there is a need to address language barriers, improve provider-patient communication, and provide appropriate medical and mental health screenings. At the organizational level, inter-organizational communication and awareness are vital. At the community level, providers can work with community leaders, to educate, create dialogue and collaboration, to help facilitate understanding and bolster community social support. Improved communication and knowledge about the unique needs and concerns of refugee women through an integrated, multi-system approach is necessary to improve their health outcomes.

Neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) is associated with a range of adverse health outcomes, exorbitant health care costs, and race/ethnicity disparity. We examined key sociodemographic factors that may influence the national race/ethnicity disparity in the prevalence of NAS among Whites, Blacks and Hispanics. 2016 and 2019 cycles of cross-sectional data from HCUP-KID national all-payer pediatric inpatient-care database were used to estimate NAS prevalence (ICD-10CM code P96.1) in newborns ≥ 35 weeks gestational-age, excluding iatrogenic-cases (ICD-10CM code P96.2). Multivariable generalized-linear-models with predictive-margins were used to produce race/ethnicity-specific stratified-estimates for select sociodemographic factors, reported as risk-differences (RD) with 95% confidence-intervals (CI). Final models were adjusted for sex, payer-type, ecologic income-level, and hospital size, type, and region. The overall survey weighted-sample prevalence of NAS was 0.98% (i.e., 6282/638100) and did not differ over cycles. Blacks and Hispanics were significantly more likely than Whites to be in the lowest ecologic income quartile and on Medicaid. In fully-specified models, NAS prevalence among Whites was 1.45% (95% CI: 1.33, 1.57) higher than Blacks and 1.52% (95% CI: 1.39, 1.64) higher than Hispanics; and NAS among Blacks was 0.14% higher than Hispanics (95% CI: 0.03, 0.24). NAS prevalence was highest among Whites on Medicaid (RD: 3.79%; 95% CI: 3.55, 4.03) compared to Whites on private-insurance (RD: 0.33%; 95% CI: 0.27, 0.38), and Blacks (RD: 0.73%; 95% CI: 0.63, 0.83; RD: 0.15%; 95% CI: 0.08, 0.21), or Hispanics, with either payer-type (RD: 0.59%; 95% CI: 0.5, 0.67; RD: 0.09%; 95% CI: 0.03, 0.15) respectively. NAS prevalence was higher among Whites in the lowest income-quartile (RD: 2.22%; 95% CI: 1.99, 2.44) compared with Blacks (RD: 0.51%; 95% CI: 0.41, 0.61) and Hispanics (RD: 0.44%; 95% CI: 0.33, 0.54) in the same quartile, and all subgroups in other quartiles. NAS prevalence was higher among Whites in the Northeast (RD: 2.19%; 95% CI: 1.89, 2.5) compared to Blacks (RD: 0.54%; 95% CI: 0.33, 0.74) and Hispanics (RD: 0.31%; 95% CI: 0.17, 0.45). Although Blacks and Hispanics were more likely to be in the lowest income quartile and have Medicaid insurance, Whites on Medicaid, in the lowest income quartile, and in the Northeast, were found to have the highest NAS prevalence.

This reflection writing was co-written by seven young people and three Master of Arts Child and Youth Care (MA CYC) students from Ryerson University. Our writing centres around a Canadian youth-led initiative called Youth First, developed as a MA CYC placement due to the lack of placement opportunities available during the pandemic. Youth First focused on creating safe and interactive spaces in cyberspace for young people during the pandemic. Through this reflection, we hope to share our experiences, accomplishments, lessons learned and overall reflection of being part of this initiative during a global pandemic.