Dunia Dadi, MPH

Pre-doc scholar, TRACT TL1 Program

Epidemiology and Community Health, School of Public Health

Primary mentor: Susan mason, School of Public Health
Additional mentor: Eunice Areba, School of Nursing

Project: Community-based participatory approach to understanding barriers to mental health service utilization among Somali refugees

Dunia Dadi is an Epidemiology PhD candidate in the School of Public Health. Dunia’s research interest areas include: mental health, immigrant/refugee health, and health disparities.  Her dissertation work focuses on community-based participatory research approaches to identify the reasons for underutilization of mental health service utilization among Somali refugees. Dunia’s project will focus on hypothesized reasons for this low uptake, including cultural stigma around mental illness, beliefs about effectiveness of treatment, and barriers to access services. Her goal is to translate her findings to practice, as they will inform outreach messaging to the Somali community regarding mental healthcare and identify needed system changes in mental healthcare organizations. Dunia also enjoys the arts and likes to paint in her free time.