Negotiating healthcare structures in the United States: Reassessing resettlement through Burmese refugee voices
Abstract
In mainstream health literature refugees have traditionally been portrayed as en masse carriers of exotic disease. This has resulted in a development of the literary discussion of health interventions in refugee communities primarily through the lens of diagnosis, management and prevention of communicable disease There has been a systematic erasure of culturally constructed understandings of health derived from the refugee experience, through the predominant propagation of the disease containment discourse in health interventions. These forms of health communication, preclude any participatory role for the refugees discursively engaging in decision making spaces about healthcare policy. This pilot project, through fieldwork with resettled Burmese refugees in the city of Indianapolis, attempts to reclaim the discursive space for community voice, by drawing on recommendations from the refugees for their active participation in local healthcare decision-making processes. The meta-theoretical lens of the culture-centered-approach is used to focus on exploring the culturally situated meanings refugees bring to the healthcare context in the United States post-resettlement through in-depth participant interviews in the community. Overall this project deconstructs the complex interaction of structural agents, such as NGOs and health providers with the resettled Burmese refugees, uncovering the agentic strategies and solutions articulated by community members in negotiating these enabling and constraining structures.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Dutta, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Communication
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