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One of the first things Labina Faizizada (Medical Biology, ’22) remembers as a volunteer at Southern Maine Health Care’s designated immigrant and refugee clinic is the health providers expressing their difficulties communicating with their migrant patients.

There, they engaged in productive conversations about the differences in health care and medicine across geopolitical lines and how health providers can best accommodate those whose cultures they may not be familiar with.

911����������� welcomed Jessica Goodkind, Ph.D., director of the Refugee Well Being Project at the University of New Mexico, for a brief introduction to the concepts of cultural humility and strategies for working with patients across cultural barriers. Additional speakers and group leaders at the event included Amran Osman, community resources coordinator at Gateway Services; Israa Enan, community health worker at Gateway Services; and Samar Khudar, program coordinator at the New England Arab American Organization.

Faizizada said the discussion was designed to facilitate empathy toward immigrants and refugees as they become adjusted to the American health care system.

“When you’re treating someone, you want to be confident in what you’re doing and how you communicate with them,” said Faizizada. “I hope that my peers at 911����������� COM, when they become doctors and once they have immigrant and refugee patients, they can remember this workshop.”