Miriam George, Ph.D. received International Research Scientist Development Award
Miriam George, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University School of Social Work received a K01 International Research Scientist Development Award from the National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center (2013-2017). During this period, she will examine the longitudinal associations among migration daily stressors, resource utilization, family dynamics, and parent/adolescent health in order to identify critical areas for intervention development. Through this research she will develop culturally appropriate interventions for Sri Lankan Tamil refugee families in refugee camps across India that could potentially be applied in other cultures. She plans to use an innovative community based participatory approach by integrating quantitative data with the Sri Lankan Tamil refugee community’s experiential knowledge to identify critical areas for intervention development.
“The proposed research is significant to public health because it will not only improve the quality of life for refugees, but also reduce the cost of health care provided by host countries, particularly low or middle-income host countries,” George said.
George is committed to creating critical, reflective and culturally informed knowledge to forge sustainable changes in refugee mental health through community-based research activities. She believes in social workers’ role to initiate community-based actions for equity in global mental health. This award will provide George the opportunity to give voice to the underrepresented Sri Lankan Tamil refugees – a vulnerable population who have been ignored and without a place to call home.
Born and raised in the small town of Koratty in Kerala, India, George joined the VCU faculty in 2011 from the University of Waterloo in Canada, where she served as an assistant professor at the Renison School of Social Work. George was a Clinical Social Worker at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, University of Toronto for ten years. She also completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in social etiology of mental health, and holds a Ph.D. in social work and women’s studies, a M.A. in educational administration and an M.S.W. in micro social work practice – all from the University of Toronto; an M.S.W. in medical and psychiatric social work from Mahatma Gandhi University in Kerala; and a B.A. in history and political science from Calicut University, also in Kerala. She is a recipient of a number of research awards including the Lois Claxton Research Excellence award, a Social Science and Humanities Research Council grant and a Canadian Institute of Health Research fellowship.
Categories Awards and honors, Faculty and staff, Research