(gentle music) - [Narrator] In recent years, print journalism and network news coverage have centered heavily on the political debates surrounding the management of immigration along the southern border of the United States.

Frequently lost in that conversation is the staggering numbers and real human toll of forcibly displaced people worldwide.

Currently, it is estimated that nearly 100 million people across the globe have been forced to leave their countries of origin for a multitude of reasons, including military conflict, social unrest, religious and racial persecution, and droughts and flooding caused by climate change.

Roughly 40% of the displaced are children under the age of 18.

As displacement continues to uproot people from their native lands, healthcare providers globally increasingly encounter these patient populations.

Healthcare providers need to learn how to effectively and compassionately address the needs of this unique group of patients.

- You take people who have chronic medical conditions, let's say somebody who has heart disease or lung disease, and you super impose on that climate change associated natural disasters or war or violence or persecution, and then you super impose on that the trauma of a migration journey, and then you superimpose on that the effects of migration once someone arrives to a host country, whether that is family separation or immigration detention or the threat of deportation.

So all of those bio-psychosocial factors add to the complexity of disease.

Hypertension in that patient population is going to look different than hypertension in a patient population where people have stable housing, a stable job, access to healthcare services and stable immigration status.

- [Narrator] A diverse team of doctors and researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine have worked to understand and alter the negative health consequences of migration as individuals and families seeking asylum arrive in the United States.

Through detailed scientific study, they studied the unique challenges faced by people dealing with displacement, the lasting effects of migration on the population of refugees and asylum seekers, and whether or not those effects can be changed.

- So what we're looking at is clinically, what is the effect of migration on their bodies?

How do we understand those effects?

And then how can we move to change them?

We're looking at how the stress of deportation or the threat of deportation, how that can affect somebody's cardiovascular system.

We're looking at how illness and disease is diagnosed in this really unique patient population.

Once we understand medically what those effects are, then we can look at intervening and changing health trajectories and outcomes.

So for example, with pregnant women, women who do not see a healthcare provider because they're too fearful of punitive immigration policies, they're fearful of family separation or immigration detention or deportation, and so they disengage from the healthcare system, what we can do is understand why that disengagement is happening and then mechanisms to intervene to affect their health outcomes.

So first we had to understand what the barriers were for people to accessing care.

And what we found in our research talking to this patient population and doing qualitative and quantitative research, was that people were very fearful of punitive immigration policies and they were unaware of their rights to access public benefits.

And in speaking to these patients, we came to understand how to lift some of those barriers.

So one of the things we found out from that research, for example, was that if information was hosted digitally, if it was hosted on a .edu or a .gov website, that that seemed more reliable to this patient population.

So because that resource didn't exist, we created it.

In this case, it's using digital tools and a website.

In other cases, it's using cutting edge digital technologies like artificial intelligence or machine learning to try to bring health equity and access and care to this patient population that has so many restrictions to accessing care otherwise.

So we figure out what the medical problems are, we figure out what the biopsychosocial problems are, and then we design innovative solutions to tackle those problems.

- [Narrator] Patient interviews and quantitative research at the Weill Cornell Human Rights Impact Lab has revealed that asylum seekers are frequently confronted with misleading and conflicting information regarding their rights.

This often complicates their efforts to receive appropriate medical care.

- It can be really confusing, not just for patients, but also for their providers.

So they're getting a lot of conflicting guidance and it's very detrimental to their care.

We've had patients come tell us, my attorney told me that I cannot access prenatal care.

My doctor told me I cannot access prenatal care, that I shouldn't see have any more visits because it might threaten my immigration application.

So because it is so complicated, there's often very few formal channels that are reliable or that patients find reliable.

Typically, they're really hearing by word of mouth, they're hearing from friends on WhatsApp or friends in the community, a community center, or a place of worship.

And so part of what we do is plug into those networks to try to spread the word about the services that people can access, but also about the research and how people can engage with that.

So if we can plug that gap, we can actually do a lot of preventative care that is good for them and that's good for our public health and good for our communities.

The way that the media portrays these people is usually masses of people who are going to destroy our communities.

And when I engage with these patients one-on-one and you're hearing their stories, these are people who have built wonderful lives in their home countries and they're here to continue those lives.

I just think it is such a misconception.

We've had people who have been ICU doctors who have been teachers, and I think when I look at the US and what we're lacking, I always wish we had more teachers, I always wish we had more doctors, I always wish we had more scientists.

And here is a patient population that is so capable and competent and professional and passionate about their work.

And if we could just make it possible for them to reintegrate and pick up those lives, I think we'd all be better off.

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