The tailored multilingual COVID-19 outreach program engaged 20% of Montgomery County's RIM community, delivering 2,392 in-person and 1,763 phone engagements, 1,468 educational sessions, 7,000 brochures, and reaching 2,092 individuals at events.
Culturally responsive, community-centered approaches and tailored health communications can meaningfully engage refugee, immigrant, and migrant populations to address health disparities.
Hypertension affects over 120 million Americans, yet immigrant and refugee populations face disproportionate barriers to effective hypertension care. With nearly 48 million immigrants and growing refugee populations in the US, understanding these disparities has become a crucial public health issue. This review synthesizes current evidence on hypertension disparities among immigrant and refugee populations, examining barriers across the hypertension care cascade from screening through control, and discusses promising interventions. Hypertension prevalence varies across immigrant populations. These populations face multiple barriers throughout care: limited screening access, delayed treatment initiation, and poor long-term control. The intersectionality of structural barriers, cultural factors, economic limitations, and healthcare system limitations creates a cumulative cycle of disadvantages. The political threats and "othering" process, discrimination and cultural marginalization, further worsen these challenges, affecting trust, care-seeking behavior, and treatment adherence.Evidence-based interventions show that culturally responsive, community-centered approaches can meaningfully reduce disparities. Community health worker programs achieved remarkable improvements in blood pressure control among immigrant populations. Technology-enhanced interventions, partnerships with faith-based organizations, culturally adapted educational resources, and Clinician cultural humility training often show promising results. However, addressing these disparities requires approaches at the individual, community, healthcare system, and policy levels to be implemented simultaneously. There need to be a sustained commitment to health equity, recognizing that the health of immigrants affects community well-being and the stability of the national and global healthcare system.
Ogungbe et al. (Wed,) conducted a other in Refugee, immigrant, and migrant (RIM) community members in Montgomery County, OH, including people from East Africa, Central America, Russia, and Turkey, socially and structurally disadvantaged (n=530,000). Multilingual culturally and linguistically tailored COVID-19 health communications and outreach program by Ebenezer Healthcare Access and Public Health Dayton & Montgomery County vs. Standard or no tailored COVID-19 communication was evaluated on Engagement and dissemination of COVID-19 information, including educational sessions, social media engagements, printed handouts, hotline calls, and community events. The tailored multilingual COVID-19 outreach program engaged 20% of Montgomery County's RIM community, delivering 2,392 in-person and 1,763 phone engagements, 1,468 educational sessions, 7,000 brochures, and reaching 2,092 individuals at events.