Since early 2020, the pandemic has had wide-ranging effects on communities across Iowa. A confluence of factors related to the Covid-19 virus have created particular health and wellness challenges for refugees and immigrants in the state. Early during the pandemic, limited reliable information was available to newer Iowans in languages other than English about how to prevent exposure to and spreading of the virus, creating uncertainties about staying safe and protecting others. Along with the destruction from and chaos due to the derecho storm of summer 2020, individuals and families have been faced with new and compounding hardships: dire employment, financial, and childcare concerns, requirements to restrict contact with family, friends, and others in their communities, as well as increasing and often unaddressed mental health stressors related to and separate from the ongoing pandemic. This year, abundant misinformation about vaccine safety and efficacy have resulted in vaccination hesitancy and mistrust in public health officials. In this session, the panel will discuss the health impacts born over the last two years and those which predate them and were exacerbated by the pandemic. Panelists will also share how refugee and immigrant communities have found resilience and strength during these difficult times. And insights will be offered into the ways in which healthy Iowa communities, broadly speaking, are those which listen to, learn from, and support one another across neighborhoods, cultures, and affinity groups.  

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Alyssa Clayden is a mental health therapist, community educator and doctoral level researcher who specifically focuses on decreasing mental health inequities in refugee and immigrant communities. Alyssa has more than two decades of professional experience living on five continents supporting innovative curriculum and best practice interventions for displaced individuals, families and communities. She runs her own community agency and supports refugee and immigrant mental health locally, nationally and internationally through telehealth services. 

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Each winter for the past 16 years, a Miles of Smiles team travels to conduct medical missions in the remote Western Highlands of Guatemala. In partnership with Rotary, Iowa MOST has been able to dramatically impact the health and quality of life of hundreds of families through cleft lip/palate and cataract surgeries.  Join Deb Dunkhase, Project Leader, to learn how Iowa MOST embodies Service Above Self to change the lives of some of the most vulnerable, poverty-stricken families in the world.
 

​For over thirty years, Deb Dunkhase dedicated herself to education in the state of Iowa.  Her work has involved direct teaching with elementary level students and leadership roles working closely with parent and teacher groups to bridge the gap between formal and informal education.  In 2019, Deb retired from her role as the Executive Director for The Iowa Children’s Museum, a successful nonprofit organization in Coralville inspiring every child to imagine, create, discover, and explore through the power of play. Dunkhase is a strong advocate for the transformative power of play and it’s link to creativity and lifelong learning.
 
Since retirement, Deb created a new nonprofit called Open Heartland serving over 250 Central American and Mexican immigrant families in Johnson County as they navigate through poverty, lack of food, housing insecurity, and the daily threat of deportation and separation from their children – all compounded by Covid-19.  Dunkhase also leads the annual Rotary District 6000 Iowa MOST (Miles of Smiles) cleft palate and cataract medical mission to serve the indigenous Mayans of Guatemala.
 
Deb strongly believes in Service Above Self and changing the world one small act of kindness at a time.

Dr. Christine Petersen, an expert on vaccines, epidemiology and the pandemic, is the director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases and a professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Iowa College of Public Health. The focus of this center is to bring together trans-disciplinary research teams to lessen the burden of emerging zoonotic infectious diseases across health settings. These efforts bring together immunologists, vaccinologists and computational biologists/biostatisticians to attack the problem of vaccine-intractable infections through statistical hierarchical modeling of protective immunity. CEID-based efforts have led to published collaborative studies.

Dr. Christine Petersen’s scholarly work has focused on the recognition and prevention of zoonotic diseases, primarily the epidemiology and immunobiology of vector-borne and parasitic diseases and like almost everyone in these fields in 2020, also now SARS coronavirus 2. Dr. Petersen is the scientific program chair for the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Dr. Petersen is the US/non-vector borne disease region representative to the international veterinary group that provides recommendations regarding treatment and prevention of infection with the zoonotic protozoan parasite, Leishmania infantum; Leishvet. Dr. Petersen’s collaborative group works in Brazil, India and Ethiopia via NIH/Fogarty International Center and NIAID-funded focused on understanding transmission routes and host species immune susceptibility for vector borne zoonoses including tick borne and sand fly borne diseases. This work has been predominantly evaluating dogs for their role in these infectious disease ecologies, but has spanned work in domestic ruminants (goats, cows and water buffalo) to small rodent reservoirs of Borrelia. Dr. Petersen’s published and patented work demonstrates the ability to target reservoir species for immunologic and parasitologic control of chronic infections to promote disease elimination. ​

When: Tuesday, February 2nd @ 12pm
Where: Online via Zoom

​By Jackie Curnick on Thursday, April 30, 2020

A link to join the online program will be sent to the email address you provide with your registration.
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The program will also be streamed live on the ICFRC Facebook Page!​

By Janice Weiner on Thursday, April 16, 2020
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Janice Weiner is a graduate of Iowa City West, Princeton University and Stanford Law School. She practiced law before joining the U.S. State Department in 1987. Her postings included East Berlin, Turkey, Belgium, Poland, Canada, Mexico, as Consul General in Düsseldorf, Germany, and liaison to Capitol Hill. After retirement, she worked for the American Foreign Service Association before moving home to Iowa.
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She is an at-large member of the Iowa City City Council and currently the Interim Executive Director of CIVIC.
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​Janice served on the board of Shelter House, and is currently on the boards of Agudas Achim Synagogue, UNA/UNA Johnson County, and the Johnson County Democrats. She plays with the Community Band and sings with the “Heartbeats” Hospice Singers. She has two grown daughters and is her young granddaughter’s guardian

By Dr. Hans House on Wednesday, February 26, 2020
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