Nurturing Child Development and Health in Refugee and Migrant Children: What’s Next?

Session Type: Conversation Roundtable

Abstract

Understanding and nurturing the development and health of refugee and migrant children is paramount. Given that initial evidence points to the significant, immediate, and longer-term negative impacts of COVID-19 on children and their families and that little is known about how to address these additional challenges in refugee populations, it is now even more pressing to understand how to best nurture refugee children’s positive development and health. Against this background, the main aim of this roundtable discussion symposium is to discuss the overarching question of what counts as “urgent” on the agenda for nurturing refugee children’s development and health. The symposium will bring together an international, multidisciplinary expert panel to address questions regarding the development, implementation, and dissemination of interventions during and after the COVID-19 crisis for refugee children. This includes questions on how to best nurture positive social-emotional development and health in refugee populations, what delivery models can help close the gap between research and practice in refugee children, and what strategies and policies have shown success in supporting refugee children in the best possible ways. The moderator will facilitate discussion between an international expert panel and the audience, focusing on conceptual and methodological challenges, progress in the large-scale dissemination of research-informed intervention approaches for refugee and migrant children, evidence-generation strategies during and after the pandemic, and implications for future research and policy.
Panelists: Tara Callaghan, St. Franxis Xacvier University
Hirokazu Yoshikawa, New York University
Ramya Subrahmanian, UNICEF
Lucie Cluver, University of Oxford
Organizer: Tina Malti, University of Toronto

Sub Unit

• Solicited Content: Refugee Children

Moderator

• Tina Malti, University of Toronto

Panelists

• Tara C Callaghan, St. Francis Xavier University

• Hirokazu Yoshikawa, New York University

• Ramya Subrahmanian, UNICEF Office of Research Innocenti

• Lucie Cluver, Univeristy of Oxford