Integrating and Uplifting Individuals and Communities with Lived Experience into Refugee/Immigrant Mental Health Service Innovation and Delivery

This year’s theme is chosen with a focus on the inclusion of community health workers with lived experience as refugees and immigrants in the mental health systems for refugee children, families and adolescents. Following our event last year, which included a Community and Providers panel and a Policy and Systems panel, our team would like to shift focus on the value of non-specialist or peer delivery in closing the mental health treatment gap of resettled refugee communities in the United States and ways to best support the workers at the community, agency, and system levels. Although there is evidence that peer delivery of psychosocial and mental health promoting interventions within refugee, newcomer, and immigrant communities proves effective in addressing cultural barriers and mental health problems, the current mental health system does not have structures in place to support these workers on a professional level. Our aim with this event is to highlight the value of non-specialists with lived experience in the refugee and immigrant mental health field, explore the obstacles faced by these community health workers, and propose solutions to these barriers in order to strengthen the presence of these individuals in the mental health service system.