The Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights

This fall Calling All Crows and Chadwick Stokes embarked on Forced to Flee, a tour dedicated to raising awareness about refugees. Here, Jennifer Sato, Data Coordinator at the Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights, shares a bit about the work the Center does here in Boston. The Center will also be joining us throughout our Seventh Annual Benefit Weekend, educating people about their work and how people can get involved in supporting refugee resettlement locally, and throughout the United States. 

Imagine yourself at home, surrounded by the people you love and the community to which you belong; this is a place of warmth and comfort, it is a place you know intimately because you are from there and have grown with it. Imagine what home looks lime in time of conflict, whether burgeoning or long-lasting, and how your relationships may change as your life – maybe your political opinions, your sexual orientation, or, your ethnic background – come into question. Imagine being forced to flee as you become targeted and hurt by people you once trusted, or a government you once looked to for guidance. You have been forced to flee to save your life and perhaps that of your family’s. This situation may sound far away and difficult to imagine but here at the Boston Center for Refugee Health & Human Rights we hear these stories every day and work hard to help those who have been forced to flee to make a new home and life in the United States.

The Boston Center for Refugee Health & Human Rights, located in Boston Medical Center, serves Boston’s growing population of refugees and asylum seekers. Since 1998 the Center has seen more than 2,336 people from 90 countries; as world conflicts develop and evolve, both these numbers continue to increase. The Center’s mission is to provide holistic health care coordinated with social and legal services for survivors and their families. It is our belief that by providing comprehensive care and practicing radical empathy, we can aid our clients in transitioning from surviving to surviving.

The Center has a dedicated team that works very hard to deliver competent care in various areas, including, but limited to: mental health, medical/dental services, case management, career development, and legal assistance. For many of our clients, BCRHHR is the first stop on their journey toward better mental and physical wellbeing, as well as their first point of contact in the Boston community. Everyday clients from all over the world walk through our doors seeking assistance as well as compassion; fleeing from your home is a traumatic event and it is BCRHHR’s responsibility and honor to offer an environment of rest and healing.

There are many unique obstacles that our clients face in the pursuit of services and an easier life; in recognition of Calling All Crow’s seventh annual benefit weekend I hope to briefly touch upon the obstacles faced by refugee/asylum seeking women. In 2013, approximately 62% of BCRHHR’s clients were women and 47% of those were victims of sexual violence. It is important to understand the courage that is required of these women to step forward and seek help for the traumas they have suffered as the stigmatization associated with such trauma is very high. Gender-based violence and discrimination, too, inhibits a woman’s ability to seek treatment and for some there is a very real fear that doing so will put them in further danger, even after having escaped their abusers.

At BCRHHR, the highly trained team has developed best practices in working with this vulnerable population. The Center offers not only mental health services to address sexual trauma or traumas related to gender issues, but collaborates with an OB/GYN that specializes in refugee health, connects women to spiritual groups or organizations, offers women’s support groups and mother’s groups, and educates women about feminine hygiene and associated products (something we also supply here at the Center). Offering complete care is essential to healing, especially when seeing women with children or infants. The Center ensures that the women who come through our doors are made to feel safe and can pursue care that is sensitive to their specific needs.

Regardless of gender or country of origin, political views or sexual orientation, the Boston Center for Refugee Health & Human Rights is here to not only advocate for our patients, but to help them heal and come to understand and realize Boston and her community as their home.