Health Without Borders: London Community Health Initiative
Overall objective: Develop leadership through designing and delivering culturally sensitive health education for refugee and migrant communities in East London, while building sustainable capacity for ongoing student volunteer engagement through UCL Friends of Médecins Sans Frontières.
Goals
Leadership abilities: By week 6, establish formal partnerships with 2-3 London-based refugee/migrant support organizations, and lead the strategic expansion of FoMSF's mission from fundraising-only to include direct community impact, creating a replicable model for future cohorts.
Critical thinking, research, and project management: By project completion, design and deliver culturally adapted health education workshops reaching community members across multiple sessions, incorporating feedback from community leaders and participants to ensure cultural appropriateness and relevance, with pre/post surveys to assess knowledge gains.
Effective communicator: Throughout the project period, develop multilingual health education resources (Arabic, Bengali, Somali) and recruit/train UCL FoMSF volunteers as culturally sensitive health educators, adapting communication approaches for diverse stakeholder groups including community organizations, volunteers, and workshop participants.
Expected outcomes
The project aims to improve health literacy and healthcare access among refugee and migrant communities in East London by addressing barriers including lack of NHS knowledge, language difficulties, and cultural differences in health beliefs. This is expected to encourage earlier care-seeking behavior and better navigation of available health services, leading to reduced preventable health complications. For partner community organizations, the project provides sustainable multilingual resources and trained volunteer capacity that continues beyond the 6-week period. For UCL FoMSF, the initiative demonstrates the connection between local and global health equity, strengthening the organization's community engagement model while supporting both local health programs and international MSF missions through integrated fundraising. Ultimately, this contributes to reducing health inequalities for underserved populations in East London.