HIDN
HEALTH AND INTERNAL DISPLACEMENT NETWORK
The Health and Internal Displacement Network (HIDN) promotes research engagement and evidence-driven policy on the health of internally displaced populations.
The HIDN network launched in April 2021 after a global workshop organised by the Internal Displacement Research Programme with the UK Academy of Medical Sciences. HIDN core members include leading senior and early-career researchers and practitioners from a range of health specialist backgrounds, institutions and countries across the world, and HIDN also draws on a wider global network of other members engaged with IDP health.
HIDN is an independent network, not led by any one institution, that is hosted on the Researching Internal Displacement website. Dr Winifred Ekezie and Diana Rayes are the HIDN liason.
IDPs often have significantly worse morbidity and mortality then other populations in, and from, conflict-affected countries. Such adverse impacts of internal displacement on health can be long-lasting, inter-generational and differentiated by gender and age. Moreover, in practice, alongside poverty, common obstacles to health service access particular to IDPs include: politicisation/stigma of IDP issues and distrust of State or other health providers; disruption of treatment for chronic conditions due to displacement, ongoing mobility or repeated displacement; and the need to stay hidden as IDPs. COVID-19 exacerbates these challenges, as IDPs face vaccine poverty and additional restrictions on movement.
Yet medical and health research on IDPs is limited in comparison with that carried out on refugees and other conflict-affected populations, meaning that an evidence-based understanding of the action needed presently remains fragmentary. HIDN exists to help develop a stronger research agenda that integrates health and internal displacement.
LATEST HIDN RESOURCES
HIDN core group members include:
〉 Dr Aula Abbara – Syria Public Health Network
〉 Professor Alastair Ager – Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, UK
〉 Professor Zulfiqar A Bhutta – FRS Aga Khan University, Pakistan
〉 Professor Karl Blanchet – University of Geneva/Graduate Institute, Switzerland
〉 Professor David Cantor – Internal Displacement Research Programme, UK
〉 JohnBosco Chika Chukwuorji – University of Nigeria, Nigeria
〉 Cecilia Jimenez-Damary – UN Special Rapporteur on IDPs, Philippines
〉 Professor Nihaya Daoud – Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
〉 Dr Sara Ellithy – Egypt
〉 Dr Winifred Ekezie – MPH, PhD, University of Leicester, UK
〉 Dr Mohammad Haqmal – Afghanistan / UK
〉 Dr Kiran Jobanputra – MSF
〉 Dr Derebe Madoro – Dilla University, Ethiopia
〉 Professor Nino Makhashvili – Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia
〉 Dr Miriam Orcutt – Lancett Migration
〉 Diana Rayes – John Hopkins University, USA
〉 Professor Maria Helena Restrepo Espinosa – Universidad del Rosario, Colombia
〉 Professor Bayard Roberts – London School of Hygenine and Tropical Medicine, UK
〉 Professor Alfonso J Rodríguez-Morales – Fundación Universitaria Autónoma de las Américas, Columbia
〉 Professor Bukola Salami – University of Alberta, Canada
〉 Dr James Smith – Elrha
〉 Dr Jina Swartz – FMedSci / MSD
LATEST HIDN NEWS
