Refugee and migrant health - Murdoch Children's Research Institute

pregnant women on couch talks with doctor

Many people come to Australia as refugees or migrants. Access to culturally safe healthcare is important to improve family health and wellbeing.

Australia has a rich mix of cultural backgrounds. The number of residents who were born overseas continues to increase.

Half of our residents were born overseas (first-generation migrants) or have a parent born overseas (second generation). More than one million people arrived in Australia from 2017 to 2021.

Traditionally, more people immigrate to, than emigrate from Australia each year. One in three women giving birth in Australia were born overseas, with the majority re-locating from non-English speaking countries.

Families of refugee backgrounds flee their home country due to war or human rights abuses. Pre-arrival experiences often are characterised by the persecution, violence, loss, human rights violations and forced displacement. Having a baby and bringing up children in a new country can be especially challenging.

Who does it affect?

More than 7.6 million migrants were living in Australia at the end of 2019-2020. The 2021 Census shows the proportion of our 26 million residents born overseas (first generation migrants) or with a parent born overseas (second generation) is 51.5 per cent.
The number of children seeking safety is steadily increasing worldwide. Australia settles over 18,000 refugee arrivals a year; more than half are children or young people.
More than 80,000 women of non-English speaking background give birth in Australia each year.

Our refugee and migrant health research

We research the health and wellbeing of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers.

Our Stronger Futures Centre of Research Excellence works with refugee and migrant communities including the Strong Families Strong Babies project. The study is partnering with maternity and maternal and child health services to investigate new ways to provide culturally safe, trauma responsive pregnancy and postnatal support for Punjabi speaking women and families from India. The overall goal of the project is to improve maternal and child health outcomes.

Women of refugee background are more likely to experience stillbirth and other adverse pregnancy outcomes. Our stillbirth prevention project, Working Together to make Pregnancy Safer, is co-designing resources for women and families and education for health professionals and interpreters.

One-third of women giving birth in Australia are born overseas, and most are from non-English speaking backgrounds. They risk missing critical information so we’re implementing and evaluating a group pregnancy care approach to overcome communication barriers, improve antenatal care and reduce adverse outcomes.

Our Refugee and Migrant Research Program in our Intergenerational Health group is building an understanding of the experiences of families of refugee and migrant background accessing maternity and early childhood services to inform organisational and systems reform.

We’re also studying resilience in children of migrant and refugee background to determine factors that help them grow up strong.

We’re examining reasons behind under-immunisation among children of migrant parents by identifying gaps in health service delivery and are urging improvements in recording catch-up vaccination.

Impacts of our research

Impacts of our research

Our clinical care, education, policy and research work in refugee health contributes to policy, guidelines including revising national refugee health screening guidelines, a vitamin D position statement, asylum seeker health, learning and medical problems in refugee children and immunisation.
Our research on oral health inequalities in refugee and migrant communities was a catalyst for the Victorian government to implement free priority dental care for refugees and asylum seekers.
We’re leading the Stronger Futures Centre of Research Excellence which brings together researchers and community partner organisations to share knowledge and address gaps in evidence about what works to build community resilience and break intergenerational cycles of trauma and social adversity.
Overcoming communication barriers is key to reducing stillbirths in migrant and refugee communities. Messages about smoking cessation, diabetes management, pregnancy complications and seeking help are vital. Our Australian-first program of community-based group pregnancy care with a multidisciplinary team is helping refugee background women from Burma and Assyrian Chaldean women access culturally safe health care and support.
Our study of Afghan families having a baby in Melbourne showed health services weren’t meeting their needs including settling in Australia, accessing general health information, female care providers and accredited interpreters, particularly during labour. This led to a partnership with public maternity hospitals, early childhood health services and refugee settlement services, the Bridging the Gap partnership, comprising many initiatives to improve refugee maternal and child health including training health workers to do things differently. One project tripled to 62 per cent the number of women with an interpreter during labour.
Our COVID-19 vaccine confidence training program helps recent migrants and refugees overcome vaccination barriers.

Our vision

We are working to ensure that migrant and refugee families have access to culturally safe and responsive health and social care to support their health and wellbeing.

Where to next?

The disruption of cycles of intergenerational trauma for families of refugee and migrant backgrounds requires coordinated action and systems change at many levels. We are working with partner organisations to build a stronger evidence-base, tools and resources for the integration of trauma-informed principles and approaches in health and social care settings.