What We Do

The Migrant Health Interest Group (MHIG) organizes opportunities available to all UACOM-P students to learn and gain experience related to migrant health and the role of physicians in mitigating the migrant crisis here in Arizona, along the U.S.-Mexico border, and abroad. Our goals are to partner with clinician networks on the U.S.-Mexico border for educational resources and volunteer opportunities and to gain clinical experience in migrant crisis centers and federal immigrant detention facilities in Arizona and other border states. Our main event is organizing our annual Rocky Point Medical Clinic - Service Trip in Spring.

Our History

The Migrant Health Interest Group (MHIG) organizes opportunities available to all UACOM-P students to learn and gain experience related to migrant health and the role of physicians in mitigating the migrant crisis here in Arizona, along the U.S.-Mexico border, and abroad. Our goals are to partner with clinician networks on the U.S.-Mexico border for educational resources and volunteer opportunities and to gain clinical experience in migrant crisis centers and federal immigrant detention facilities in Arizona and other border states.  With the support of Physicians for Human Rights National Student Program (PHR), we send students to conferences to train to provide legal-medical documentation for asylum seekers and refugees, to train in trauma-informed care, and to learn about the specific health problems that affect this population through educational events, networking, and by gaining first-hand experience as medical volunteers.

 MHIG’s accomplishments in the past academic year reflect the mission of the interest group. First, MHIG partnered with  the University of Arizona COM-Tucson and The Arizona Asylum Network to host a virtual PHR Asylum Evaluation Training conference.  Students received training in asylum evaluation, a unique legal-medical partnership in which students use their medical knowledge to help immigrants in federal detention centers support their immigration cases by providing a history and physician exam and writing an affidavit that may be used in court (e.g., such a report may document physical signs of torture, abuse, psychological injury, or post-traumatic stress disorder). 

 MHIG is currently planning a second training session for the spring semester.  Currently, we are conducting online evaluations and students are receiving CHIP hours for their contributions. MHIG is currently working to establish the Asylum Clinic as an in-person CHIP site. In the past,  MHIG has sent numerous students to the detention centers in Florence and Eloy to employ these skills in doing asylum evaluations with University of Arizona faculty physicians.

Currently, MHIG is working to expand opportunities for students with PHR to work with local immigration lawyers to write letters on behalf of asylum seekers in ICE detention facilities who are especially vulnerable to contracting COVID-19 or especially vulnerable to complications of illness. Physician letters can be used to show the immigration court that the client is unsafe in detention and argue for their release. The letter is written after reviewing medical records provided by the attorney and deciphering the client's vulnerable status.

Links

Volunteers step in to keep asylum seekers healthy on border

PHR Partner Medical School Clinics

To request an evaluation from the UACOM-P Asylum Clinic, please email uaphoenixasylum@gmail.com 

If you are a health provider interested in performing evaluation for the UACOM-P Asylum Clinic, please fill out the form below to join our network!