Potter ’24 Examines Maternal Health Services for Refugee Mothers in Utica – News

In a mission funded by the Kirkland Endowment Advisory Committee, Aliana Potter ’24 spent the summer season conducting analysis in Utica specializing in maternal well being companies for refugee moms. She talks concerning the significance of her analysis and the way she hopes it should make a distinction.

The United States has among the highest charges of maternal and toddler mortality in the world. Hearing these statistics over and over in my Sociology of Health and Illness and Healthcare Systems programs opened my eyes to our nation’s incompetence and inefficiency surrounding maternal well being. I made a decision I wished to know extra.

The Kirkland Endowment Advisory Committee funds pupil-led initiatives every summer season that “support the needs and interests of women at Hamilton.” As an interdisciplinary public well being concentrator, I selected to check well being inequity. I had additionally labored with Professor Herm Lehman in the Biology Department final spring on some preliminary analysis and had been uncovered to the range of Utica’s refugee neighborhood. With these rules in thoughts, I drafted a proposal that targeted on the standard of Utica’s maternal well being companies for refugee moms.                                                                                       

Prenatal and postpartum being pregnant care are important to the well being of each the mom and toddler, and with out correct companies to deal with the mom’s wants, our inhabitants’s well being will endure. One group at specific danger throughout being pregnant is refugee moms. These girls typically have language boundaries, smaller assist methods, minimal understanding of the American healthcare system, and are used to a special mannequin of maternal care. I wished to grasp how they’re adapting given their circumstances.

I reached out to dozens of healthcare suppliers in the Utica space with a collection of 14 questions aimed toward higher understanding the companies their respective practices provided to refugee sufferers. Questions I requested included: “Does your practice conduct any outreach to refugee communities?” and “Do you think Utica has made any changes to adapt to the high number of refugee patients entering the healthcare system?”

I analyzed patterns and developments in these interviews and decided there have been each themes of success and areas in want of enchancment. For instance, respondents prompt a larger deal with neighborhood assist teams as a result of rising charges of postpartum despair amongst refugee moms. Another participant highlighted their practices’ robust cultural competency coaching that they hoped might be shared with different clinics in Utica. Yet, different contributors famous that their present digital file administration system doesn’t translate right into a affected person’s generally spoken dialects.

Utica is at the moment constructing a brand new hospital downtown, and I hope to work with my interviewees to implement a few of our suggestions into the work of the brand new hospital workers. I additionally intend to current my findings in Utica and permit varied clinics to study from one another and hopefully enhance their care for refugee moms.