Barriers adult refugees face to community health and patient engagement: a systematic review

ABSTRACT

Meeting the health needs of refugee populations and increasing access to healthcare remains a challenge for healthcare systems globally. As such, community health and patient engagement are increasingly recommended strategies to address health-related issues among refugees. This systematic review aims to identify the reported barriers that adult refugees encounter with community health and patient engagement. Data sources included MEDLINE, Embase, APA PsycINFO, CINAHL, and Core Collection (Web of Science), yielding 1156 records. After removing duplicates and two levels of screening, 18 studies were selected for qualitative analysis. The barriers were conceptualised as cultural norms, pre-departure history, education, language proficiency, stigma, racism, social support, and multi-factorial barriers. These barriers can be addressed to improve rapport with refugees and the quality of community health and patient engagement initiatives.

KEYWORDS:

• Patient engagement
• community engagement
• refugees
• healthcare inequities
• patient-centred care

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Judith Logan, Assistant Head of User Services at the John P. Robarts Library (University of Toronto Libraries, Toronto, Ontario, Canada), for their support in designing the search strategy.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Authors’ contributions

KS conceived the review, coordinated the contributors, designed the search strategy, and prepared the manuscript. KS and AL selected the studies. HA resolved study selection conflicts, and with MM, designed the analysis. KS, AL, and HA contributed to the first draft, data extraction, and data analysis. All authors revised drafts of the manuscript and approved the final manuscript. The corresponding author had full access to all the data in the study and final responsibility for the decision to submit for publication.