On September 9, Emory PA students joined over 180 students, faculty and participants from across the university in a forum on unauthorized immigrant health and well-being. The forum is a collaborated effort of students and faculty in the schools of medicine, law, business, theology and public health, and departments of history, anthropology, and Latin American and Caribbean studies.
The event is inspired by the lack of legal knowledge medical professionals have for interacting with unauthorized immigrants, as well as by the lack of general understanding of this population's access to medical and health services. The total US population of unauthorized immigrants is currently 11 million people.
Presentations and panel discussions were geared towards better preparing health care and other professionals for the challenges of working in a complicated legal environment and to foster informed decision-making.
Speakers
- Bill Warren - pediatrician and founder/CEO of the Good Samaritan Clinic in Atlanta
- Sisters JoAnn Persch and Pat Murphy - 45 years experience as humanitarians and social workers out of the Catholic Church of Chicago
- Seth Holmes - physician and medical anthropologist in San Francisco who spent 5 years working as a migrant farmer before writing "Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies."
- Jodie Guest - director of HIV research at the Atlanta VA Medical Center, and epidemiologist at the South Georgia Farmworker Project
- Polly Price - Emory law professor specializing in immigration law who spent the summer on an immigrant health fellowship on the Mexico – U.S. Border
- Marie Marquardt – Emory theology scholar and author of “Living Illegal”
CDC representative of the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine - which is involved with immigrant health screening, and assessing infectious disease and other immigrant health trends
The meeting was organized by PA student Elizabeth Willets
To be involved in Emory's Health Organization for Latin America (HOLA), please contact Amanda Santander.