Migrants generally seem to underutilize healthcare services and migrants' health needs are not necessarily identical to the host population. Forced migrants are generally considered a vulnerable group and integrating migrants into existing healthcare systems has been subject to various research in Nordic-Baltic countries with a goal to address inequalities between migrants and the host society and achieve social cohesion.
Many factors have been shown to impede access to healthcare services among the migrant population, such as communication skills, language proficiency, cultural backgrounds, educational level, knowledge of the health system, socioeconomic status and lack of culturally sensitive healthcare services.
The proposed project aims to create a body of knowledge on migrant health, their HSB and their perception of the healthcare system in their current host countries. The project will specifically focus on URW residing in Sweden, Norway and Estonia. The proposed project will design and develop a User Centered Design (UCD) of Digital Health Intervention (DHI), to help improve dissemination of information, increase access to healthcare services, and strengthen support systems within the healthcare infrastructure.
WHO classification of DHIs categorizes the different ways in which digital and mobile technologies are being used to support health system needs. The UCD approach offers a well-established method for understanding the domain and applying participatory design techniques to address the needs of relevant stakeholders, ultimately leading to innovative solutions with reduced resource and time investments.
The proposed DHI will follow “health care access framework” of Levesque et al and will include participatory design techniques to involve multi-disciplinary team and stakeholders including healthcare professionals, designers, health researchers and URW in all stages of the development.
The results from this project will provide novel knowledge on HSB of URW and diverse solutions to improve migrants’ integration into Nordic-Baltic healthcare systems. The project aligns with multiple UN Sustainable Development Goals.