Pregnant women at risk: an evaluation of the health status of refugee women in Buffalo, New York.

Each year, conflicts escalate the need for women, children, and men to seek refuge outside their home countries, and the United States and Canada provide asylum for many of these refugees. However, few researchers have investigated the health status of specific populations of refugees sojourning or newly arrived in the United States. As nurses at a Buffalo, New York, refugee shelter for Canada-bound asylum seekers, we provided health assessments to this group of refugees at their on-site clinic. Pregnant women were of major concern, being potentially at risk for poor pregnancy outcomes. We found that our sample of pregnant refugees had several previously undetected health problems and suggest that further research on refugee populations is needed.