Refugee Health Primer program

Greetings and introductions 

Session: Overview of Refugee Migration

Bio: Dr. Meb Rashid has had the privilege of working with newly arrived refugees for nearly twenty years.  He is the medical director of the Crossroads Clinic, a medical clinic that serves refugees arriving in Toronto.  He also co-founded the Canadian Doctors for Refugee Care, an organization founded to advocate for refugees to access health insurance and was on the steering committee of the CCIRH, a group that developed evidence-based guidelines for the assessment of newly arrived immigrants and refugees.   He is a co-founder of the Christie Refugee Health Clinic, a health clinic located in a refugee shelter.  He is on staff at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto and is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto. 

Session: Award-Winning Young Advocate for Refugee Rights and Co-founder of Elegant Art

Learning objective: To inspire participants to understand how storytelling, youth-led initiatives, and art can be powerful tools for healing, empowerment, and amplifying refugee voices.

Bio: Sedra Alshamaly, a compassionate 16-year-old living in Canada, co-founded Elegant art at the age of 11 to help displaced children through art. Being featured on many news channels like CBC news, Global news, and more, the organization creates art on plantable postcards to raise funds for their current focus, children in Syrian refugee camps. Sedra, also a writer, is working on a book that advocates for the voiceless and talks about her family’s journey to safety. Having dedicated thousands of volunteer hours, Sedra is passionate about helping her community and advancing women and children rights as well as encouraging youth to join the movement of making change. Sedra’s determination is evident through her public speaking engagements, earning her awards from government leaders and a commitment of making others smile through her impactful work. 

Session: Supporting the growth and development of refugee children: A guide for primary care providers

Bio: Dr. Shazeen Suleman (she/her) is a Clinical Associate Professor in General Pediatrics at Stanford University. She is the Co-Director of Community Engagement with the Office of Child Health Equity and a Global Health Faculty Fellow. She holds a courtesy appointment with the University of Toronto Temerty Faculty of Medicine and is an Affiliate Scientist with the MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions.

Prior to joining Stanford, she developed the Compass Clinic, a trauma-informed, multi-disciplinary clinic that cares for newcomer children with special healthcare needs, the only one of its kind in Ontario, Canada. Her research uses community-based participatory research methods (CBPR) to address health disparities for migrant children with special healthcare needs through co-developing and evaluating interventions and policies. She holds multiple grants from the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR), including a prestigious New Investigator Grant. Her work is fundamentally guided the communities she serves. She has a long history of community engagement and organizing, beginning from when she co-founded the MusicBox Children's Charity, now national organization that has provided free music education programming to support whole child development to nearly 20,000 marginalized children across Canada, with over 30 community partners.

She is recognized as a national expert in Canada for caring for migrant children and holds multiple leadership roles, including the chair of the AAP Chapter 1 Immigrant Child Health Committee, the Newcomer Child Health Special Interest Group and the Caring for Kids New to Canada Taskforce with the Canadian Pediatric Society. Her longstanding relationships with refugee support agencies in Canada and the United States, including shelters, settlement agencies, governmental institutions, local and federal policymakers and clinical and community advocates locally and across both countries help her contribute to advocacy efforts to improve the lives of migrant children in North America.

Session: Mental Health: focusing on children and families

Learning objectives: 

• Explore the social determinants that contribute to poor mental health outcomes.
• Differentiate between distress and disease, helping participants recognize when symptoms we are see are "normal" or expected.
• Identify situations in which medications are appropriate, and review which medications have been shown to be most effective for specific mental health symptoms.
• Examine the different types of counseling and therapeutic interventions available, and evaluate the current evidence on their effectiveness in improving mental health outcomes for children and families.
   

Session: Parasites in new Canadians from tropical areas: what you need to know about immunization

Session: Early detection and prevention of Tuberculosis in foreign-born populations

Learning objectives: 

• Describe key clinical features of tuberculosis disease to facilitate early diagnosis
• Discuss the diagnosis and treatment of latent TB infection
• Discuss new practice recommendations in the 8th edition of Canadian TB Standards 

Bio: Dr. Kamran Khan is staff physician with the Division of Infectious Diseases at St. Michael’s Hospital, a scientist at Unity Health Toronto’s Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, and a Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto. Kamran has over 20 years of clinical experience in tuberculosis working at St. Michael’s Hospital and the Toronto Western Hospital TB clinics. He has published extensively on the management of TB in immigrant and refugee populations, including coauthoring several chapters of the Canadian TB Standards.  

Kamran has also been studying emerging global infectious diseases for the past two decades. To translate and disseminate scientific knowledge into timely action during public health emergencies, Kamran founded BlueDot, a global epidemic intelligence company that supports governments and private enterprises in strengthening their readiness and resilience to epidemics. His work has led him into numerous advisory roles from the World Health Organization to the White House. Kamran has been the recipient of a Governor General’s Award for his research transcending clinical medicine, public health, and artificial intelligence and holds a Temerty Health Nexus Chair in Innovation and Technology at the University of Toronto. 

Session: Updates in Hepatitis B and C Clinical Care and Public Health Initiatives

Learning objectives: 

• To review public health initiatives and gaps for HBV and HCV
• To review screening, diagnosis, and testing modalities for HBV and HCV
• To review guideline-driven primary care management of HBV and HCV, and when referral is indicated

Bio: Mia Biondi, PhD, NP-PHC, received her PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from McGill University, with postdoctoral fellowships at Toronto General Research Institute and the National Microbiology Laboratory. Mia completed her clinical training at Western University to become a Registered Nurse and then Nurse Practitioner.   

Mia is an Assistant Professor at York University, and leads the Primary Health Care Nurse Practitioner program. At present her research focuses on increasing hepatitis B, C, and HIV screening and treatment through alternative diagnostic and systems approaches.  Clinically, Mia is a practicing Primary Health Care Nurse Practitioner in refugee and newcomer health; and oversees focused practices in urban street outreach and rural and remote communities, in HIV prevention, hepatitis B & C.

Session: Advocacy for Refugees: perspectives and practices across sectors

Session: Healthcare Coverage for Refugees: Navigating the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP)

Bio: Dr. Vanessa Redditt is a family physician at the Crossroads Refugee Clinic, a specialized primary care clinic for refugees at Women’s College Hospital, and a lecturer at the University of Toronto’s Department of Community and Family Medicine and Dalla Lana School of Public Health. She is passionate about advancing health equity and tackling social determinants of health. Vanessa’s clinical care, research, teaching, and advocacy focus on enhancing the health of marginalized communities, particularly refugee newcomers and migrants. 

Session: Common Themes of Caring for Newcomer and Refugee Women

Learning objective: In this session, participants will aim to identify and reflect on topics relevant to the care of refugee and newcomer women including contraception, screening and prevention, and fertility care.

Bios: Dr. Praseedha Janakiram is a Family Physician at Women’s College Hospital Crossroads Refugee Clinic and an Assistant Professor at the DFCM.  Her primary care  practice is focused on the care of refugees and community-based HIV primary care with special interests in refugee and global health education, as well as capacity-strengthening initiatives and partnerships. Dr. Janakiram has held leadership roles including Program Director of Enhanced Skills in Global Health at the DFCM, Acting Vice Chair Global Health and Social Accountability in 2019, and she is the current Faculty Lead for the Toronto Addis Ababa Academic Collaboration in Family Medicine. Praseedha has recently been named Theme Lead of the New and Evolving Academic Leaders Program at the Center for Faculty Development at the University of Toronto.  Her work and engagement have been recognized through numerous awards in leadership, education and global health. 

Dr. Rachel Spitzer grew up in Montreal and Toronto and obtained her BSc at McGill University in Montreal.  She completed medical school at McMaster and residency training in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Toronto.  This was followed by fellowship training at The Hospital for Sick Children in Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology. Dr. Spitzer went on to obtain her MPH at Harvard University in 2007/2008 with a concentration in International Health and an interdisciplinary concentration in Women and Gender Health.  Rachel combines clinical practice of general and pediatric and adolescent Obstetrics and Gynecology with the practice and teaching of global women’s health and acts as Vice Chair, Global Health and Fellowship Director, Global Women's Health and Equity at the University of Toronto Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.  

Closing remarks