Academics and campaigners in action

Well to answer my own question, I got an answer to my last blog post quicker than I had imagined. The answer or at last an answer hit me last week when I attended a conference on Refugee Wellbeing in Coventry.

What made this event special was the wide-ranging audience. Not only were there academic researchers

present, there were also health practitioners and NGO activists in the room. It just felt that there was a really good mix of experience and skills.

When I tried to sum up the conference at the end of the day, I issued a challenge that I hoped that this conference would not be an end in itself, and that action was needed to make change happen. I needn’t have worried – from the feedback from the workshops it was clear that the academics, health practitioners and NGO activists were committed to working together to for change. Maybe we need to see more of this cross sector collaboration if we are going to see real change on difficult issues such as refugee mental health?