Improving the Health of Immigrant and Refugee Women and Children through Immunization.
This is a study that I was involved in after my PhD when I moved to BC for a post-doctoral fellowship. I continue to work on this project. We did focus groups with women who are pregnant or have children who have lived in Canada for 5 years or less. The case study I worked on specifically was with Punjabi women. This made sense, since I have spent almost 2 years in India and still have active research and partnerships with people in India. There is also a large Punjabi population in BC. Other case studies were with Congolese women, Nigerian women and Syrian women.
We are exploring what people understand and like about health messaging related to vaccines. We conducted a series of focus groups. In the initial focus group people talked about things they thought and knew about vaccines and the healthcare system. Within the second focus group people discussed health messaging that is available, what they liked, and what they thought we could do better (one of the things we evaluated with the women was the book in the hyperlink picture you see here).
This is a Canadian Institutes of Health Research funded study. We are currently analyzing and wrapping up this work and looking towards next steps working with the monarch collaboration.
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