Supporting Migrant Children in Pediatric Settings: Lessons Learned from the US Migrant Humanitarian Crisis Response.

This article examines the influx of migrants to the United States and highlights current global and local immigration trends. The authors focus on migrant children-specifically the effect of migration trauma in the context of humanitarian responses to the intentional movement of migrants to Democrat-led cities across the US to humanize the compounded effects of migration trauma, restrictive immigration policies, and the current resettlement landscape for migrants. The authors are directly involved with supporting migrant arrivals who have relocated to Chicago from the southern border, and apply field knowledge to articulate current barriers to accessing health care and best practices within pediatric settings supporting migrant arrivals. Clinical and practice implications for medical providers in pediatric settings are included. The article also highlights the role of interdisciplinary collaboration in providing health care to asylum-seeking migrants and implications for transdisciplinary workforce development in this area. [Pediatr Ann. 2024;53(5):e171-e177.].

Health inequities and social determinants of health in refugee and immigrant communities.

This article evaluates and elucidates the intersections across social and economic determinants of health and social structures that maintain current inequities and structural violence with a focus on the impact on imMigrants (immigrants and migrants), refugees, and those who remain invisible (e.g., people without immigration status who reside in the United States) from Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities. Psychology has a history of treating individuals and families without adequately considering how trauma is cyclically and generationally maintained by structural violence, inequitable resources, and access to services. The field has not fully developed collaboration within an interdisciplinary framework or learning from best practices through international/global partnerships. Psychology has also been inattentive to the impact of structural violence prominent in impoverished communities. This structural harm has taken the form of the criminalization of imMigrants and refugees through detention, incarceration, and asylum citizenship processes. Most recently, the simultaneous occurrence of multiple catastrophic events, such as COVID-19, political polarization and unrest, police violence, and acceleration of climate change, has created a hypercomplex emergency for marginalized and vulnerable groups. We advance a framework that psychologists can use to inform, guide, and integrate their work. The foundation of this framework is select United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to address health inequities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

A model of collaborative immigration advocacy to prevent policy-based trauma and harm.

OBJECTIVE: Research suggests that antiimmigrant policies enacted in the United States, magnified during the 2016-2020 period, propagate widespread trauma across communities of immigrants (von Werthern et al., 2018). While these policies harm all groups of immigrants, structural conditions (e.g., lack of documentation status, race, ethnicity, country of origin, and other social and legal determinants) shape how they are experienced. To address the widespread traumatic harm inflicted by racist and xenophobic policies, a group of leaders from eight Divisions of the American Psychological Association (APA) and the National Latinx Psychological Association (NLPA) launched an Interdivisional Immigration Project (IIP). METHOD: The IIP served to develop a model for collaborative advocacy, bringing together mental health providers (i.e., psychologists, social workers), allied professionals, and immigration activists from community organizations across the country. This model was developed over the course of 1 year, coinciding with the global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the amplified movement for racial justice. RESULTS: This article describes the key components of the IIP collaborative advocacy model: (a) structuring leadership in a democratic and egalitarian manner, (b) centering and uplifting immigrant voices, (c) forming teams across five U.S. regions, (d) facilitating critical dialogues grounded in liberatory practices, (e) centering trauma and empowerment, and (f) developing advocacy strategies. The IIP collaborative advocacy model is informing advocacy to protect immigrants from harm. DISCUSSION: This model may be used as the basis for ongoing humane immigration policy activism that centers the voices of community activists, and that pushes psychologists and allied professionals to use their positionality to support community-based efforts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).