Mitra Naseh, an assistant professor at the WashU Brown School, has received a $612,000 grant from the Missouri Foundation for Health as co-principal investigator on a new project titled “Community-Driven Solutions for Sustainable Systems Change.”
Led by Brown School alumna Fatema Medhat, Missouri state refugee health coordinator at the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), the project is a collaborative partnership among USCRI, WashU, the Integrated Health Network and the MICA Project.
The project seeks to address growing inequities in healthcare access among refugees and immigrants in Missouri. The initiative aims to strengthen connections between refugee-serving organizations and mainstream healthcare systems, including federally qualified health centers, hospitals, rural clinics and public health agencies.
Over three years, the project will bring together refugees, healthcare providers, service organizations and community leaders to identify systemic barriers, map leverage points and design solutions together. Refugee and immigrant communities will serve as co-designers and decision-makers throughout the project. The initiative’s long-term vision, Naseh said, is to build a durable, refugee-informed infrastructure for health equity in Missouri that also can respond to future migration policy changes and evolving healthcare challenges.
