Community Coping Intervention for Somali Refugee Women is an innovative pilot study with an overall goal to test a previously developed and culturally adapted community-oriented Somali Health Realization intervention among resettled Somali refugee women who have experienced war trauma and associated psychosocial problems. This study will use a group randomized trial pilot design and assign participants from three geographically distinct communities to different study conditions: 1) a Health Realization intervention condition (treatment), 2) a nutrition education condition (alternative treatment), or 3) an evaluation-only control condition. Somali women refugees in the Minneapolis-St Paul metropolitan area will be recruited via community venues by Somali co-investigators who have worked with the research team on multiple prior studies. After resettlement, Somali refugees often continue to experience disproportionately high rates of depression and symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder. Somali women are at particular risk because these types of stresses are known to threaten their overall health and the health of their children as well. Somali mothers recognize that their parenting is compromised by their own psychosocial struggles, but are often unsure of where to turn for help. It is well documented that refugees with psychological problems do not access the clinical mental health system, but research suggests that refugees are willing to participate in community interventions. The proposed Somali Health Realization intervention is a community-oriented educational intervention that is consistent with the theoretical framework of stress and coping. The intervention has potential to alleviate trauma-related psychological difficulties by promoting understanding of the impact of thought on experience. This proposed study contributes to the body of knowledge by testing a community delivered intervention that has been shown to be acceptable to the Somali community. Standardized outcome measures of depression and anxiety symptoms and use of coping strategies will provide critical preliminary data that will support the design of a larger trial of the Somali Health Realization intervention.
The Community Coping Intervention for Somali Refugee Women is an innovative pilot study with an overall goal to test a previously developed and culturally adapted community-oriented Somali Health Realization intervention among resettled Somali refugee women who have experienced war trauma and associated psychosocial problems. This proposed study contributes to the body of knowledge by conducting a group randomized trial pilot of a community-delivered intervention that has been shown to be acceptable to the Somali community. Standardized outcome measures of depression and anxiety symptoms and use of coping strategies will provide critical preliminary data that will support the design of a larger trial of the Somali Health Realization intervention
