Practice in Public Health for Immigrants & Refugees

In order to increase skills for future public health and preventive medicine leadership and administration and fulfill residency requirements, you will participate in a practicum experience at the Division of Global Population and Infectious Disease Prevention (DGP) within the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) and identify a project related to immigrant and refugee health outcomes to be completed in the time allotted, a minimum of 320 hours, over a three-month period. You will focus on developing skills in program planning, public health interventions designed for solving health disparities, engagement of community organizations, program evaluation and operations/budgeting.

You will then practice these skills at the Oasis Clinic at Boston Healthcare for the Homeless Program, over a 2-month nonclinical rotation focused on needs assessment or other projects related to SDOH, and/or analyses of health outcomes data related the unhoused immigrant population served by this FQHC. Oasis is a clinic focused on providing accessible primary care services to immigrants experiencing homelessness in Greater Boston. Based on a model of immigration-informed care, the Oasis Clinic strives to incorporate language access, medical-legal resources, highly experienced case managers and benefit specialists, and an anti-racist approach to providing healthcare with dignity. The intersection of immigration and homelessness poses numerous and complex challenges to health equity. The Oasis Clinic leverages the expertise throughout BHCHP, including housing specialists and behavioral health, to ameliorate these entrenched challenges.