"The perfect storm": community worker perspectives on the impact of COVID-19 on New York City immigrants and migrant-serving organizations.

Background: Immigrants in New York City (NYC) have higher COVID-19 mortality than the general population. While migrant-serving organizations (MSOs) provide access to a breadth of services, they are disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic due to staffing limitations, funding cuts, and resource limitations of communities served. Methods: Six focus-group discussions were conducted to explore the experiences of MSOs in NYC during the COVID-19 pandemic from November 2021 to March 2022. Study participants csomprised a subsample of survey respondents from a larger study identified via lists of MSOs. Results: Twenty-seven organizational representatives from 11 MSOs across NYC participated in the discussions. In addition to providing information on communities served, services offered, and organizational characteristics, the following themes emerged from the convenings: mental health challenges and resources needed for immigrants; immigration-related challenges; factors exacerbating hardships for immigrants during COVID-19; interorganizational collaborations and partnerships; policy change; and needs/requests of MSOs. MSOs provide a wide range of services as non-profit organizations and use interorganizational collaboration to improve service delivery. The proximity of MSOs to immigrant communities helps providers understand the needs of immigrants relating to the COVID-19 pandemic and factors that shape telehealth services. Conclusion: MSOs are important providers and advocates for immigration policy in the US given their relationship with the populations they serve. These findings have implications for how to support MSOs that serve immigrants in NYC. Strategies to achieve this include timelier availability and exchange of information, policies, and research as well as strengthening the experience-based advocacy of these groups.

The vulnerability to COVID-19 of migrants in large urban areas: structural exacerbators and community-level mitigators.

BACKGROUND: Despite research on large urban areas in the context of COVID-19, evidence on how these settings impact migrants is still limited. OBJECTIVE: To explore exacerbating and mitigating factors of large urban areas on migrants' vulnerabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: We conducted a systematic review of peer-reviewed studies published between 2020 and 2022, focused on migrants (foreign-born individuals who have not been naturalized in the host country, regardless of legal immigration status) in urban areas with a population >500 000. After screening 880 studies, 29 studies were included and categorized within the following thematic framework: (i) pre-existing inequities, (ii) governance strategies, (iii) urban design and (iv) engagement of civil society organizations (CSOs). RESULTS: Exacerbating factors include pre-existing inequities (e.g. unemployment, financial instability and barriers to healthcare access), exclusionary government responses (e.g. ineligibility for relief funds or unemployment benefits) and residential segregation. Mitigating community-level factors include the engagement of CSOs to fill institutional and governmental gaps through service provision and use of technology. CONCLUSIONS: We recommend increased attention to pre-existing structural inequities faced by migrants, more inclusive governance strategies and partnerships between government and CSOs to improve the design and delivery of services to migrants in large urban areas. More research is needed on how urban design can be utilized to mitigate COVID-19 impacts on migrant communities. The factors identified in this systematic review should be considered as part of migrant-inclusive emergency preparedness strategies to address the disproportionate impact of health crises on migrant communities.

The Violence Against Children Surveys (VACS): Using VACS data to drive programmes and policies.

The Violence Against Children Surveys (VACS) are nationally representative surveys of males and females aged 13-24 years, designed to measure the burden of sexual, physical, and emotional violence experienced in childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. As of 2020, 22 countries implemented or are implementing a VACS. Since the first article using VACS data was published in 2009, several peer-reviewed articles have been published on the VACS. However, no publications have analysed the breadth of the work and how the data are represented in the literature. We conducted a review of the peer-reviewed research which used VACS data or mentioned the VACS. Between 2009 and July 2020, 50 peer-reviewed articles with data from 11 countries were published. Two studies (2/50; 4.0%) focused on boys, while 14 studies (14/50; 28.0%) focused on violence against girls. Fourteen articles focused on sexual violence (14/50; 28.0%), compared to three on emotional violence (3/50; 6.0%), and two on physical violence (2/50; 4.0%). Lastly, 52% of the articles (26 of the 50) were first authored by someone at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We identified the need to support local authors, and additional research on violence against boys, and physical and emotional violence.

Technical working group D report: Government and donor support for breastfeeding in health and health-related programs.

The purpose of this working group was to design a general strategy for government and donor support for breastfeeding promotion in health-related and other non-maternity health programs. First, it is important to examine the reasons why governments and donor agencies accept or reject programs to support.