Empowering Refugee Communities through Inclusion and Health Innovation: The FOSTER Project Journey
The FOSTER Project in Malaysia represents a strategic response to the COVID-19 pandemic within the refugee community. By integrating self-testing protocols into refugee learning centers (RLCs), the initiative aimed to facilitate early disease detection and contribute to a more robust health infrastructure for refugees with limited access to healthcare.
The project is founded on two key principles. Firstly, it focuses on community empowerment by training refugee community health workers and refugee teachers to spearhead this initiative, thus enhancing community-wide health resilience. Secondly, it leverages RLCs as essential platforms for extensive community engagement, facilitating the broad implementation of self-testing practices in the community and bridging the gap between the community and health and governmental resources.
Despite equitable COVID-19 treatment and vaccination policies, the pandemic disproportionately affected migrant-refugee populations in Malaysia, exacerbating their vulnerability to the virus and its transmission. Urban refugees in Malaysia also faced considerable hardships during the pandemic. Challenges such as inadequate support, overcrowded living conditions, restricted healthcare access, unstable jobs, food insecurity, and lack of status heightened their risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and to significant adverse economic and health outcomes.
In response, the FOSTER Project aimed to enhance COVID-19 prevention and control among refugee students and educators in selected RLCs in Malaysia. The research objectives were:
1. To identify the optimal COVID-19 self-testing package (paper-based/video tools) and CV19 ST model (assisted by peers, assisted by NGOs, unassisted) for implementing a COVID-19 self-test in RLCs.
2. To assess the feasibility of the COVID-19 self-testing strategy in the select RLCs.
3. To identify and describe contextual factors influencing the effective implementation of COVID-19 self-testing in refugee learning centres in Malaysia.
Using Bowen et al.'s feasibility framework and a convergent mixed-methods approach this study the project was conducted from 01 September 2022 to 31 August 2023.
PRE-IMPLEMENTATION PHASE
IMPLEMENTATION PHASE
POST-IMPLEMENTATION PHASE
DATA
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The project is founded on two key principles. Firstly, it focuses on community empowerment by training refugee community health workers and refugee teachers to spearhead this initiative, thus enhancing community-wide health resilience. Secondly, it leverages RLCs as essential platforms for extensive community engagement, facilitating the broad implementation of self-testing practices in the community and bridging the gap between the community and health and governmental resources.