PM3042: The Y-HEALAR Healthy Community Curriculum: Implementation of a Virtual Health Education Curriculum for Afghani Refugee Families During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has widened disparities in healthcare access and education particularly for impoverished and migrant populations. Yale Health Education and Literacy for Asylees and Refugees (Y-HEALAR), an existing partnership between medical professionals at Yale and two New Haven-based refugee resettlement agencies, aimed to implement and assess an interactive, virtual healthcare curriculum to improve Afghani refugee healthcare knowledge.

Methods: Using the Kern approach for curricular development, seven two-hour virtual classes were developed and taught by pediatric residents and medical students with faculty input from June 2021-March 2022. Topics were chosen in collaboration with community organizations and included nutrition, parenting, COVID19 Safety and Vaccines, common childhood illnesses, mental health, navigating the school system, and navigating the healthcare system. Powerpoint slides were used as visual aids; real-time translation was provided by interpreters in Pashto or Dari. Refugee participant self-perceived knowledge acquisition and satisfaction was assessed with a retrospective pre-post test administered by phone within 10 days of the class consisting of five topical self-assessment questions with a 5-point Likert scale. Retrospective pre- and post-class scores were aggregated, averaged, and compared with t-test.

Results: Each class was attended by an average of 6 participants (range=3-9). Of 36 total respondents (80% response rate), 100% were female, 97% married. Participants arrived in the US an average of 5±3 years ago;53% had no formal schooling and 100% were Medicaid recipients. Self-perceived health topic knowledge significantly increased from pre- to post-class in all classes (aggregate pre-class average score of 2.5±1.0 vs aggregate post-class average score of 4.0±0.9 on a 5-point Likert scale, p< 0.001).100% of respondents would recommend the class to a friend.

Conclusion: We demonstrate improvement of refugee participants’ self-assessed healthcare knowledge from pre-to post-class following participation in virtual health education classes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results demonstrate that an academic-community partnership between healthcare providers and community refugee organizations has the potential to improve health education in refugee families.