Refugee Health: Information Needs of Health Professionals

Abstract

For health professionals who work with refugee and asylee clients, finding linguistically and culturally appropriate information for their clients can be challenging. Respondents of an information needs assessment identified several issues including literacy and health literacy, diversity of clientele, availability of existing materials, funding for translation, time to look for existing materials, and the information overload newcomers face. Current information needs included more time and money to find and create materials, translated materials in advance of newly arriving populations, one-stop shopping for materials, nonprint materials, and information on specific diseases and preventative care.

KEYWORDS:

• Asylees
• consumer health information
• immigrants
• multicultural health information
• multilingual health information
• refugees

This research was supported in part by an appointment to the NLM Associate Fellowship Program sponsored by the National Library of Medicine and administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education. This project was conducted and the article written when the author was Associate Fellow, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland. The author gratefully acknowledges the leadership of Gale A. Dutcher and Stacey J. Arnesen, National Library of Medicine, and John C. Scott, Center for Public Service Communications, Arlington, Virginia, on this project.

Notes

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