Boosting Community Partnerships for Immigrant Mental Health

January 13, 2025

At a time of heightened uncertainty for immigrants in the U.S., two efforts at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health are focused on strengthening access to community mental health resources.

Both efforts involve connections with the Malden, Mass.-based Leah Zallman Center (LZC) for Immigrant Health Research, which works with partners—such as local immigrant communities, advocates, policymakers, and funders—to produce research aimed at spurring improvements in immigrant health and well-being.

Over the summer, health management student Jennifer Zhang, MPH ’25, did a practicum at the center and produced a policy brief on immigrant mental health that was finalized in November. The brief, created with colleagues at the LZC, summarized structural inequities impacting mental health among immigrants and proposed solutions.

Separately, a new collaboration between Harvard Chan School and LZC will address immigrant mental health and well-being through research, education, and partnerships with local groups. The work with the LZC—part of a new Harvard Chan initiative called Partnerships for Community Health and Immigrant Well-being—is being led by Maggie Sullivan, instructor and health and human rights fellow at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, and Jocelyn Chu, director of community engaged learning at Harvard Chan School, in partnership with the LZC.

The brief produced by Zhang and LZC colleagues outlined some of the life experiences unique to immigrants that pose risk factors for mental health, including trauma as a cause or result of migration, lack of access to health care services and insurance, lack of legal status, living in multigenerational households, and cultural and language barriers. Given these factors, it’s important to create tailored, trauma-informed, and culturally effective mental health services and policies to address immigrants’ unmet needs.

Read more at HSPH.Harvardhttps://hsph.harvard.edu/news/boosting-community-partnerships-for-immigrant-mental-health/