Asylum seekers are a vulnerable population that faces many challenges, such as access to resources and navigating information precarity. While there are many available resources, such as non-profit communities, public healthcare benefits, programs, and others, their use may be complicated because of asylum seekers’ privacy concerns, family and health situations, and technology experience. Studying how asylum seekers access resources, find information online, and use technology can provide an understanding of their unique needs and important design considerations for digital tools or interventions that could help bridge access to resources.
These issues are exacerbated in the current state of the world with the political climate in the U.S., widespread misinformation online, and the COVID-19 pandemic; therefore, helping this population in accessing resources, such as legal information and public healthcare benefits, is a particularly timely need.
To help asylum seekers and refugees to find relevant information, we created a digital resource, the RightsforHealth website, which contains information about public benefits available to immigrants based on their immigration status.
This project is part of a wide collaboration between teams in the Cornell Social Media Lab, Cornell Law School, and Weill Cornell Medicine.
To learn more about this project, please see papers and presentations below.
Relevant publications/presentations:
Bhandari, A., Freed, D., Pilato, T. Taki, F., Kaur, G., Yale-Loehr, S, Powers, J., Long, T., Bazarova, N.N. (Forthcoming) “Multi-stakeholder Perspectives on Digital Tools for U.S. Asylum Applicants Seeking Healthcare and Legal Information”. PACM HCI (CSCW 2022).
Freed, D., Bhandari, A., Yale-Loehr, S., Bazarova., N.N. “Using Contextual Integrity to Evaluate Digital Health Tools for Asylum Applicants”. 4th Annual Symposium on Applications of Contextual Integrity, 2022.
Migrations project helps refugees claim health care rights (March 29, 2022), Cornell Chronicle