Refugee Resettlement Status and Trauma-Related Mental Health Service Continuity in Kenyan Camps: A Difference-in-Differences Analysis of Documentation Pathways

Trauma-related mental health service continuity among refugees in Kenyan camps depends on documentation status, yet the causal effect of resettlement eligibility on service utilisation remains poorly identified. The analysis is framed as a methodological and comparative contribution: it specifies the estimand, articulates the parallel-trends assumption, and derives the required data structure without reporting empirical estimates. The design distinguishes between documentation status as a binary eligibility marker and as a dynamic administrative process, arguing that the latter better captures the mechanism linking resettlement verification to service continuity. Power calculations for the proposed design indicate that sector-level clustering and attrition require a minimum of 24 sector-period observations to detect a 15% change in continuity with 80% power. The proposed framework is intended to guide future data collection and to clarify the assumptions that any empirical implementation must satisfy.