Addressing Social Determinants of Health in the Most Diverse Square Mile in America

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PROJECT SUMMARY The Georgia State University School of Public and its partners propose a Prevention Research Center (the GSU PRC) that will focus on the health and health disparities of migrants. There is a growing consensus that migrant health is a major public health issue. The City of Clarkston, Georgia is a refugee settlement and migrant gateway that accepts approximately 1,500 migrants per year. GSU has an established presence in Clarkston, primarily through the Perimeter College Campus, and has been active for some time in community mobilization and migrant health. Our aims are: to establish a PRC that will be housed at the Clarkston branch of Perimeter College; conduct an initial research project that focuses on the health and well-being of migrant of children using SafeCare, a validated approach to the prevention of child abuse and neglect; constitute a Community Advisory Board consisting of major agencies that play a role in migrant health; use community- based participatory approaches; develop an interdisciplinary research team that will conduct prevention intervention studies; institute communications mechanisms to disseminate findings widely, and translate research into operable intervention activities in the community. Our overall strategy is to work with the migrant community and the community-at-large to create a safe place for children in an environment that diminishes the impact of adverse social determinants. Our proposed research project will create culturally appropriate adaptations of the SafeCare model, develop and test two models for implementation in this special setting, and identify broader factors that influence program delivery. We will specifically test the utility of “task shifting;” that is, appropriately moving tasks that can be performed by less trained personnel, including community members. The project will be led by Dr. Michael Eriksen, Founding Dean of the School of Public Health, and Dr. Rodney Lyn, the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. The internal structure of the proposed PRC includes administrative and technical units concerned with communication, dissemination, and translation, as well as faculty from Perimeter College and other Schools and Colleges of GSU. The project will be guided by a Community Advisory Board, to be chaired by a member of the migrant community. Though specific prevention research will be the result of collaboration with community members and agencies, we envision that one of our major products will be a toolbox of multipurpose methods that can be applied in a multi-ethnic environment. To that end, an extensive program of community training is proposed. We foresee extensive collaboration with the PRCs that share our interests and challenges.