International Migrants Day 2024

December the 18th marks International Migrants Day: the UN General Assembly chose the anniversary date of the 1990 adoption of the “International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families” (A/RES/45/158). This year the theme is “Honouring the Contributions of Migrants and Respecting their Rights”: ongoing wars, climate as well as regime changes make this call to value the presence of migrants and respect their human rights more crucial than ever.
Member States and Organizations are called to adhere to the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration and to share sound facts about migrants to global audiences, including problems with human trafficking, the lives of migrant workers’ children, the plight of refugees, and ways to combat racism. At regional and global levels, key partners include relevant UN agencies (especially IMO, WHO, UNHCR, ILO).
This blog highlights IMD 2024, incorporating interviews and insights from Springer Nature, journals, books and content chosen by the publishers. All are related to SDG 3 goal: "Ensure healthy lives and promote weel-being for all at all ages", and to the related key targets : reducing maternal mortality, ending preventable deaths for children under five, fighting communicable diseases, reducing mortality from non-communicable diseases, and promoting mental health.
Communities contribution
We are very grateful to our editors, authors and colleagues for sharing their research and insights into migrant health for International Migrant Day 2024. Explore their work further by browsing and clicking the links below.
On the occasion of IMD 2024, we are honoured to welcome Professor Aldo Morrone and Doctor Isotta Rossoni, who shared insights on their experience with free health access to migrant and displaced persons, and on identifying gaps in the protection of vulnerabilised people in the context of human migration and displacement. To find other interesting blog posts related to IMD 2024, explore the Springer Nature Research Communities website at large. This platform hosts a variety of articles and discussions from experts in the field, providing valuable perspectives on migrant health. Simply use the search function on the website to discover relevant content and stay informed about the latest developments and initiatives in this critical area of public health.
Highlights from Springer Nature publishers
SpringerNature journals offer a wide array of contents on the latest advancements and challenges to migrant health and rights.
OA Nature journal has latest insights on Migrants’ mental health recovery in Italian reception facilities and Community-based screening enhances hepatitis B virus linkage to care among West African migrants in Spain as chronic infection with HBV disproportionately affects migrant persons from the sub-Sahara, and identifies a successful model for providing care, including vaccination.
A wealth of OA papers are available on Arabic-language digital interventions for depression, risk factors for communicable disease, multiple sclerosis disease-modifying drug use, Covid-19 vaccination, acute respiratory infections in resource-limited primary care settings, building resilience among Ukrainian refugee children in Poland, psychological implications of unemployment, hepatitis B and C prevalence viruses among migrant workers in Qatar.
On the ISRCTN Registry pages, you will find three studies fostering immigrant adjustment and wellbeing: the first on foreign workers, then on adult parents, and for adolescents: the PIA Youth Program was developed as a 6-week cognitive dissonance-based universal intervention to support newly arrived youth in promoting their adjustment and development in the host society.
International Journal for Equity in Health features "No papers, No treatment" an OA review on barriers undocumented immigrants face in accessing emergency healthcare services, in the Journal Cancer Causes & Control the paper Developing a city-wide, community-engaged cancer disparities research aims to a roadmap against treatment disparity for 3 cancer centers in Philadelphia, USA, whereas the BMC Globalization and Health Journal published a review on Barriers and facilitators to primary healthcare utilization among immigrants.
The OA Springer journal Discover Mental Health features a paper on Understanding community-based mental health interventions among migrant workers in Singapore.
Human Rights Review proposes an Open Access analysis of The Venezuelan Migrant Population’s Right to Health in the Bucaramanga Metropolitan Area.
The Open Access Journals BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making and BMC Medical Research Methodology, focusing on methodological approaches to healthcare research, recently published:
- Design and implementation of a web-based, respondent-driven sampling solution describes a tool used to survey typically hard-to-reach populations including migrant populations;
- Overcoming denominator problems in refugee settings with fragmented electronic records for health and immigration data: a prediction-based approach on how to manage health data in a fragmented context, such as that of refugees;
- Adjusting for outcome risk factors in immigrant datasets: total or direct effects? illustrates how, in order to mitigate bias, health studies dealing with immigrant datasets should adopt particular statistical adjustments.
The Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health features new papers on:
- Identifying the Health Educational Needs of Refugees: Empirical Evidence from a Delphi Study (OpenAccess): effective learning objectives must be identified based on refugees’ health knowledge gaps;
- Exposure to Racism and Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes for Black Women: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis to identify systemic racism and its role in adverse pregnancy outcomes;
- Applied Learning in Advanced Asylum Medicine: Piloting Experiential Learning in Forensic Medical Evaluations, on new ways to train clinicians to conduct forensic medical and mental health evaluations.
Journal collections on topics related to IMD 2024:
BMC Global and Public Health is calling for submissions to its collection on accessible, acceptable, and sustainable health care for migrants and refugees. Submission deadline is 7 March 2025 !
Chapter & Book content for IMD 2024:
Specific book chapters deal with maternity during COVID-19 and migrant women adaptation, the Adjustment to Immigration, on the Intersections of Culture and Intimate Partner Violence, delve into Why Social Work Methodologies matter in Delivering Psychosocial Support, and Swedish Early Regulations and Conceptualizations of Migration. Historical aspects and their legacy are explored in a chapter on Labor Migration from Angola and Mozambique to East Germany 1979–1990 and Indenture in Three Keys: Chinese, Indian, and Javanese.
For a more extensive coverage, Springer Book content highlights the multiple health challenges that migrant or displaced populations face, from Emerging and Re-emerging Infections in Travellers (edited by Hakan Leblebicioglu, Nick Beeching, and Eskild Petersen) to the revealing surface as in Skin Disorders in Migrants (by Aldo Morrone, Roderick Hay, Bernard Naafs) and the depths of the brain in Neurology in Migrants and Refugees (edited by Mustapha El Alaoui-Faris, Antonio Federico, Wolfgang Grisold).
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