The REFUGE-study: Health and Quality of Life Among Resettled Syrian Refugees and Asylum-seekers in Norway (REFUGE-I)

Brief summary The civil war in Syria has taken a severe toll on the Syrian population, with over 350 000 dead and more than 10 million Syrians forced to leave their home since 2011. The majority of the estimated 5.6 million Syrians who have left the country as refugees currently reside in Syria's neighboring countries (Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon), while about 1 million have fled to Europe. In the peak year of 2015, a little over 10500 Syrians applied for asylum in Norway and an estimated 26 000 lived in the country at the start of 2018 according to statistics from the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration.

Being a refugee or resettled refugee is psychologically stressful and increases the risk of ill mental health. Prior research has demonstrated high to very high levels of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and anxiety in refugees compared to normal populations. As highlighted in prior review articles on the subject, there is a lack of studies on refugees originating from the Middle Eastern countries, and there is a need for future studies on refugee mental health to move beyond the focus on PTSD, depression and anxiety in order to capture the wider psychological consequences associated with being a refugee or resettled refugee. With the current number of displaced people globally approaching an unprecedented 70 million, including more than 25 million refugees, the need to understand and address the health challenges in this population is more pressing than ever.

The present study, REFUGE-I, constitutes the first phase of a planned longitudinal cohort study (REFUGE-study) on health and quality of life among resettled Syrian refugees in Norway. The overarching aims of REFUGE-I are to recruit a representative sample of Syrian adults who are willing to participate in the longitudinal cohort study and to obtain baseline information on health-related topics as well as demographics for this recruited sample.

REFUGE-I will use a cross-sectional survey design. The study population will be a random and representative sample of 10 000 Syrians over 18 years who arrived in Norway between 2015 and 2017, and who currently live and have a registered residential address in Norway. The sampled group will be contacted and informed about the study through postal mail. Information about the study will also be distributed through other channels: regular media (e.g. television and newspapers), social media (e.g. Facebook), District Medical Doctors/Public Health Officers, and a study web-page with more detailed information on the study including instructive animation videos in Arabic. Those consenting to participate will be asked to fill out and return a postal survey questionnaire on demographics and health-related topics focusing on:

Symptoms of posttraumatic stress, anxiety and depression Quality of life Self-reported physical health (focusing on subjective pain) Sleep difficulties and alcohol consumption patterns Social support Potentially traumatic experiences before or during the flight from Syria Stress experienced after arrival in Norway (post-migratory stress)

Participants will also be asked whether the research group can contact them again for the second and third phase of the longitudinal study, and informed that consent to participation entails consent that survey data will be linked to Norwegian registry data on education, work participation and sick-leave, drug prescriptions and utilization of the health-care system. The registry data will be linked to survey data in the later phases of the larger longitudinal study.

The main objective of the REFUGE-I study is to obtain and publish a thorough cohort profile that includes descriptive statistics for the final sample on the above-listed health-related topics, as well as information and statistics on potential selection bias issues that might affect the generalizability of findings.

The study is a collaborative effort between five research institutions and universities in Norway and Sweden. One of the collaborating partners, The Swedish Red Cross University College, has already conducted a similar study on 1215 resettled adult Syrian refugees in Sweden, and results from REFUGE-I will be compared to the findings from the Swedish study. Moreover, an important long-term goal for the larger REFUGE-study is to help advance research on refugees by making resources from the study available online, and through the creation of a large database containing pooled data from the REFUGE-study and studies done through the Swedish Red Cross University College and potentially other national and international research groups.