Scholar of the Month

I ended up in health social work in a roundabout way—I was a premed Biology major and had planned to go to medical school, but then found that I was better suited to be “premed” through a social lens. I first began working with refugee and forced migrant communities in Philadelphia during my MSW practicum at a refugee resettlement agency 15 years ago. I’ve been engaging in community-based research and practice with refugee communities since then.

I engage in what I like to call “responsive community-driven research.” I aim to “solve problems” and health topics that are identified as priorities by the stakeholder communities. I collaborate with community partners, such as the Burmese American Community Institute, and students.

I’m currently undertaking a project called, Addressing Disparities in Autism Spectrum Disorder among Burmese Refugee Families in Central Indiana, funded by the CTSI Collaboration in Translational Research grant. ASD has been identified as a health priority among local Burmese families, and it was IU student Thian Hnem who approached me about developing a study on this topic in 2019.

What started first as an exploratory study grew into this collaborative intervention research project, through which we’ve been running caregiver support groups for Burmese families in different languages at local Burmese churches. Our team has developed a caregiver support group program called, “TogetherStrong” and has translated the manual components and materials into Hakha Chin and Falam Chin.

We have presented our findings at multiple conferences, including the North American Refugee Health Conference, Society for Social Work and Research, and at Purdue University’s Autism Research Center Conference. We have a published a paper in the Asian American Journal of Psychology, Help-Seeking Experiences among Burmese American Families of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Multi-Informant Qualitative Study.

Engaging with community members!

I LOVE to read, I collect vintage books, and I love traveling when I can! Books that I enjoyed in the past month: James by Percival Everett, (re-read) Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Intermezzo by Sally Rooney, The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris, Code Name Helene by Ariel Lawhorn. Currently reading: Human Acts by Han Kang, Men Without Women by Shahrnush Parsipur, (re-reading) 1984 by George Orwell.

Integrally. Our CTSI project team involves Thian Hnem, who is a medical student at IU SOM and Jenni Thang, a PhD student in Counseling Psychology at Purdue—as they are both members of the Burmese community we view them as peers who are experts and linguistic specialists. I also regularly advise doctoral students and research assistants.

Integrally. I aim to have research agendas driven by priorities that are identified by community members.

I am seeking funding to sustain our current project, particularly because two other Burmese churches have requested that we hold caregiver groups (“intervention groups”) in different languages at their churches. Our team is also considering an epidemiology study to understand the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder among refugee and forced migrant populations.