BeWell: quality assurance health promotion pilot

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to determine the experience participating in a health promotion program for refugee and asylum seekers and torture survivors in a safety net clinical setting.

Design/methodology/approach

Refugee and asylum seeker torture survivors participated in a seven-week health promotion program at a safety-net clinic. Participants interviewed before, during and after the program was designed to improve and maintain health promotion program quality.

Findings

Six major themes emerged: social networks; tools/techniques/skills; wellness planning; spiritualism; health maintenance; and social/group interaction. Preliminary results suggest that this multi-pronged approach is feasible and acceptable to foreign-born torture survivors.

Research limitations/implications

Torture impacts many facets of one’s life. A program which addresses health from a multidisciplinary perspective has promise to facilitate healing.

Practical implications

The impact of torture and human rights violations significantly affects many facets of peoples’ lives including emotional, social, physical and spiritual dimensions. Therefore a program which utilizes a multidisciplinary integrated bio-psychosocial and spiritual approach has the potential to simultaneously address many domains facilitating healing.

Originality/value

BeWell, a bio-psychosocio-spiritual health promotion strategy aimed at improving health service quality and increasing patient satisfaction to support positive health outcomes by implementing in-classroom/person modules for patients, to the authors’ knowledge is unique in its efforts to encompass multiple domains simultaneously and fully integrate an approach to wellbeing.

Citation

Piwowarczyk, L.A. and Ona, F. (2019), "BeWell: quality assurance health promotion pilot", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 32 No. 2, pp. 321-331. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJHCQA-08-2017-0152