My project investigates how Black immigrants to the U.S. use different healing strategies to navigate their lives and overcome obstacles they had to face in coming from their country of origin. For this pilot study, I worked with a non-profit organization in the DMV and I connected with a participant from my mentor\u2019s ongoing project. I interviewed three individuals: a mother and son from Ethiopia, as well as a Haitian practitioner of traditional Chinese acupuncture. Through the interviews and secondary literature review, I drew out common themes around how they practiced care as immigrants in the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Being a child of Black immigrants, I initially found conversations surrounding mental health within my family and social circles to be frustrating. As I grew older, I found their hesitancy to connect with mental health specialists and instead either rely on alternative practices or ignore their symptoms altogether reflected existing gaps in literature and resources for mental health care in the U.S., particularly among Black immigrant populations. As I conducted my interviews, I resonated with my interlocutors\u2019 sharing about the power that the community holds in their lives. Whether connecting with distant family members for job and work opportunities or reaching out to church congregations for support during a tough time in their lives, community was upheld as the main indicator of their success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One aspect of my project that surprised me was how Black immigrants from nations currently experiencing socio-political unrest developed certain methods to manage negative mental health feelings. I\u2019m interested if these methods could be considered coping strategies. Additionally, I plan to investigate this question more as I continue this work at Hopkins. I hope to connect with another organization in the area that serves Black immigrant populations to work for them and potentially connect with more interlocutors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My project investigates how Black immigrants to the U.S. use different healing strategies to navigate their lives and overcome obstacles they had to face in coming from their country of origin. For this pilot study, I worked with a non-profit organization in the DMV and I connected with a participant from my mentor\u2019s ongoing project. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1371,"template":"","profiletype":[87],"class_list":["post-1370","profile","type-profile","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","profiletype-research-fellows"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/msh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/1370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/msh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/msh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/profile"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/msh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/1370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1372,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/msh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile\/1370\/revisions\/1372"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/msh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/msh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"profiletype","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/msh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiletype?post=1370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}