Riva Refugee & Immigrant Voices In Action

The health equity campaign emphasizes building the voices of people at the grassroots level to address barriers to care. The key areas of focus for the campaign are mental health, social determinants of health, medicaid and support services to victims of domestic violence and sexual assault by organizing with an intersectional approach and forging relationships with a network of diverse stakeholders, several coalitions have successfully been formed to reach multiple populations that will benefit greatly from advocacy and increased access to social services. Forged at the outset of the covid-19 pandemic, these coalitions have hosted clinics, expanded information about covid-19, disseminated at-home testing kits, provided training, curated a library of multilingual educational resources, and supported local health departments.

Embarc programs serve diverse ethnic groups from burma to provide essential linguistic and culturally appropriate services to iowa refugee and immigrant community members through peer-to-peer education, case management, systems advocacy, and community development. Specific areas include (1) early childhood parent and family support; (2) crisis advocacy and referral services; many clients also received employment navigation support and increased wages; and (3) esl citizenship classes to assist with citizen applications.