The Texas Refugee Wellness Initiative aims to create a comprehensive approach to improve refugee mental health across the state of Texas.
The program aims to achieve the following objectives:
- Increase mental health and emotional wellness literacy of refugee clients.
- Increase providers’ understanding of refugee health needs, so that they can interact in a culturally and linguistically appropriate manner to improve delivery of services to refugees.
- Increase refugees’ access to healthcare systems by creating community stakeholder meetings that will establish refugee wellness formalized networks promoting cross-agency collaboration to eventually create a support and referral network to address refugee health needs.
The initiative will establish a network of trauma informed and culturally competent mental health professionals and referral systems that ensure effective access to mental health services. This will be achieved by:
- Trauma-informed trainings for refugee community leaders, healthcare, education, and resettlement staff.
- Training workshops for mental health and general health professionals.
- Building linkages between providers, refugees, and the community by forming stakeholder coalition meetings.
- Creating virtual directories of accessible behavioral health providers.
These objectives will promote health literacy in the refugee community, build the capacity of professionals to effectively engage with refugee and immigrant populations, and organize community resources to effectively address gaps.
On the right, find the virtual directory of accessible behavioral health providers. The providers listed offer low-cost care options such as reduced fees or sliding scale and have expertise in serving diverse populations.