[This article was originally published by Columbia Global Centers]
The two-day workshop on qualitative methods in migration and health research was held online on September 30 and October 1. This workshop was organized as part of the project that aims to promote the use of digital health technologies in humanitarian settings, funded by the President’s Global Innovation Fund at Columbia University. The project is an initiative of the Center for Development at the Earth Institute of Columbia University in collaboration with the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia Global Centers Istanbul, Department of Public Health of the Faculty of Medicine at İstanbul University, and Bir-İz Association.
During the workshop, local and global experts trained postgraduate public health students and early-career public health researchers in Turkey to increase their research capacity on qualitative and mixed methods research with migrants and refugees.
The workshop was moderated by Prof. Selma Karabey, Department of Public Health, Istanbul Faculty of Medicine at Istanbul University. It started with the presentation of Dr. Deniz Mardin, Consultant in Migration Health, on the general concepts in the field of migration and health. Sibel Sakarya, professor at the Department of Public Health of the Faculty of Medicine at Koç University introduced the qualitative and mixed approaches used in public health research with migrants. Then, Goleen Samari, assistant professor at Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, discussed how to collect qualitative data with migrants and refugees.
On the second day of the workshop, Prof. Bülent Kılıç at the Department of Public Health of the Faculty of Medicine at Dokuz Eylül University made a presentation on qualitative data analysis. Following that, Dr. Özge Karadağ Çaman from the Center for Sustainable Development explained the community-based participatory research with migrants and refugees. In the last part of the workshop, Dr. Özge Karadağ Çaman, and Asst. Prof. Yanis Ben Amor, Executive Director of the Center for Sustainable Development, talked about the challenges and ethical issues in migration research. Throughout the workshop, participants had chances to ask their questions to the experts, and benefited from networking with their peers and discussing future collaborations.
Below are some of the testimonials from two of the participants:
This is the first online-training that I have actively participated in! I thank you all who put their effort into this training. One of the best features of this workshop was gathering researchers working in similar fields and meeting them with experts both at the local and global levels. Thank you! A participant
Thank you for your effort! It was a well-designed training. I benefited and learned from the workshop a lot. I wish it could continue... A participant