Interviewee: Aysan Dehghani, Bachelors, College of British Columbia | Editors: Janielle Richards, Romina Garcia de leon (Weblog coordinators)
Revealed: March 28, 2025
Are you able to inform us about your analysis?
I’m at the moment ending my bachelor’s diploma, and the analysis I lead is known as IWASHRA’s Neighborhood Compass. The challenge focuses on immigrant ladies’s entry to sexual and reproductive well being in British Columbia. We’re exploring the accessibility and experiences of newcomer ladies in the case of healthcare—all the things from discovering assets, to their interactions with healthcare suppliers, and the way they navigate the system. Basically, we’re taking a look at how immigrant ladies interact with the healthcare system and figuring out any boundaries they face.
The challenge began as a directed-study below the steering of my main investigator, Dr. Jemima Baada, who’s a professor within the Geography Division at UBC. The challenge advanced right into a community-based initiative. It’s been operating for about three years now, and our staff consists of 4 researchers, together with a graphic designer who initially joined our staff as we made it to the Map the System finals at UBC, and who has continued to assist us with displays and supplies.
Though we’re within the means of writing a coverage transient with the CERC in Migration and Integration staff at Toronto Metropolitan College, we’ve additionally been conducting workshops with the group. Up to now, we’ve held two main workshops, and the most recent one targeted on “journey mapping.”
Are you able to describe “journey mapping”?
Journey mapping is a visualization instrument we utilized in one in every of our workshops to raised perceive how immigrant ladies entry healthcare assets, notably because it pertains to sexual and reproductive well being. It’s basically a timeline that traces their experiences—from the preliminary stage of trying to find healthcare info, like discover a main care physician or testing facilities, all over to receiving care and making suggestions on what enhancements will be made.
We had a proper dialogue within the bigger group, but additionally broke into smaller teams with tables of newcomer ladies, the place we facilitated discussions. To make the workshop much more priceless, we collaborated and invited group companions MAP, Volentia Translation and Strong State Coop. We additionally invited a household doctor, Dr. Mei-Ling Wiedmeyer, from Umbrella Well being Co-Op, to affix us. She has expertise working with cultural well being brokers, so she understands the challenges confronted by newcomer ladies in accessing healthcare.
In the course of the advice stage of the workshop, Dr. Wiedmeyer was capable of filter the solutions and supply insights from her expertise as a doctor. For instance, she emphasised the necessity for modifications to Canada’s “one-size-fits-all” healthcare mannequin. The present system doesn’t all the time meet the varied wants of immigrant populations, and we have to adapt to these wants.
What led you to do that analysis?
I determine as a third-culture pupil. I’m ethnically Persian, however I’ve lived in a number of nations, together with the UAE, Germany, and now Canada. My household moved to Germany proper in the midst of the European refugee disaster in 2015, and that have left an influence on me. I used to be despatched to a refugee camp to finish paperwork after we arrived, and I noticed how troublesome it was to navigate the system as a newcomer, even with all of the privileges I had.
This expertise sparked my curiosity in immigrant and refugee points. Throughout highschool, I even wrote my IB thesis on the political penalties of Angela Merkel’s choice to permit over 1 million refugees into Germany. From there, I targeted my research at UBC on migration, well being, and coverage, notably round how the healthcare system can serve immigrant populations. I additionally labored on the BC Middle for Illness Management on a digital sexual well being initiative referred to as DiSHI, which additional fueled my curiosity in sexual well being and reaching particular populations with tailor-made assets.
Presently, I’m additionally a trainee below the HER-BC staff on the Girls’s Well being Analysis Institute (WHRI), and dealing with an unimaginable all-female staff that makes the analysis a lot extra significant.
The place do you hope to see this work in 10 years?
In the case of translating analysis into coverage findings, one of many largest challenges is feasibility. Is my challenge relevant in the actual world? And whether or not will probably be accepted by the general public and the federal government. Analysis is essential, but it surely’s equally essential to show that analysis into one thing actionable that may actually profit communities.
One of many suggestions we’ve made is the creation of an built-in healthcare mannequin. Newcomer ladies face very distinctive and sophisticated social determinants of well being, so multidisciplinary healthcare facilities that may tackle these wants are important. Ideally, these facilities could be arrange in districts or areas, offering a mixture of physicians, nurse practitioners, social staff, and counselors—multi functional house. This might enable communities to entry a extra tailor-made, complete healthcare system.
The problem, after all, is the monetary facet. However there’s already proof exhibiting that built-in healthcare fashions will be efficient. For example, one of many leads at Strong State Co-Op, Mahado, is proposing a healthcare heart via the Afiya Care Middle, which might function a mannequin for this sort of community-based healthcare. I discover that extremely inspiring, and I hope to see this mannequin expanded.
Finally, in 10 years, I’d like to see this analysis translate into a completely built-in healthcare system that may meet the varied wants of immigrant ladies. By connecting public well being with coverage in a method that is smart for these communities, we might create a system that actually works for everybody.
Further notable assets/organizations associated to this work:
Sustain with Aysan’s work on Linkedin