Digital Technologies and Youth Health Promotion in Forced Migration Settings

Common barriers to health information and healthcare access – such as gender, other social determinants of health, availability, affordability, geographic accessibility, acceptability, and quality of services – are exacerbated for refugees, especially for those living in out-of-camp settings in host countries.

With the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, refugees and other migrants have had additional vulnerabilities and barriers to accessing health information, health care, education, social care, and other support services. Young refugees, especially refugee girls and stigmatized/marginalized refugee youth groups, have been among the most vulnerable. This age group is also important because the proportion of children and young people is usually higher among forcibly displaced populations, when compared to general populations.

Worldwide, innovative technologies are increasingly being used to improve services for refugees and conflict-affected populations. These technologies offer great potential for improving efficiency, reducing costs, permitting rapid scalability of essential services, and reaching out to more vulnerable and stigmatized/marginalized groups, such as young girls and women, out-of-school youth, youth working in difficult conditions, youth living with chronic conditions and disabilities, as well as other disadvantaged young people that struggle with health information and healthcare access.

This panel of speakers will discuss how digital health technologies can be used to promote health in humanitarian and forced migration settings, the effect of youth-adult partnerships, youth participatory and co-design approaches, and social media tools on engaging youth in health education and promotion work in countries affected by forced migration and how digital divide and inequalities can be decreased in these settings.