Fostering excellence: development of a course to prepare graduate students for research on migration and health

University ofPrinceEdwardIsland,Charlottetown,PEI,CanadaAccepted for publication 23 April 2012DOI: 10.1111/j.1440-1800.2012.00605.xOGILVIE L, HIGGINBOTTOM G, BURGESS-PINTO E and CHRISTINA MURRAY. Nursing Inquiry 2012 [Epub ahead ofprint]Fostering excellence: development of a course to prepar e graduate students for research on migration and healthCanada is an immigrant-receiving nation and many graduate st udents in nursing and other disciplines pursue immigranthealth research. As these students often start with inadequate understanding of the policy, theoretical, and research contextsin which their work should be situated, we became concerned tha t the theses and dissertations were less sophisticated thanwere both possible and desirable. This led to development of a PhD-level course titled Migration and Health in the Canadian Con-text. In this study, we provide an analytic overview including course description, objectives, assignments, and specific class top-ics. Areas of focus include historical and theoretical considerations; determinants of immigrant health; refugee health; culturalcompetence and cultural safety; research challenges, approaches, and skills; policy-relevant research; and educational impera-tives in the health and related disciplines. Salient research is introduced in each of these classes. While Canada is the mainfocus, comparative data are provided and there is relevance for nurse-researchers in other immigrant-receiving countries.Key words: graduate education, immigrant research.According to the International Organization for Migration(IOM 2011), there are approximately 214 million interna-tional migrants, comprising 3.1% of the world’s population,an increase from an estimated 150 million in 2000. Therewere an estimated 15.2 million refugees worldwide in 2009,as well as an estimated 27.1 million internally displaced per-sons. Within this international movement of people, Canadais a major immigrant-receiving country. Federal policiesimplemented in 1962 and 1967 removed racial discrimina-tion and geographical location as barriers to immigrationand introduced a point system with criteria that recognizeattributes likely to enhance newcomer integration, such aseducational attainment and official language facility, in theimmigrant selection process. This was the first point systemfor immigration in the world and has resulted in increasedcultural heterogeneity of the Canadian population. In 2010,Canada welcomed 280,636 new permanent residents from169 counties (CIC 2011). These figures include 24,693 refu-gees. Over 90,000 of these newcomers initially settled in Tor-onto followed in terms of numbers by Vancouver, Montreal,Calgary, and Edmonton, respectively. Smaller numbers wentto other cities and rural areas. How we integrate these new-comers and manage diversity will have an impact on socialcohesion