Guest Speaker: Dr Charlotte de Kock

In this final episode of the series titled ‘Bridging Borders - Exploring Substance Use Patterns Among Migrants and Refugees’, we are joined by Dr Charlotte de Kock. Dr de Kock specialises in substance use treatment for migrants and ethnic minorities, as well as drug prevention and this episode centres around her work and what can be learnt from it.

The conversation begins with Dr de Kock highlighting the significance of research co-production, emphasising its requirements and ethical considerations. Dr. de Kock makes clear that we should be ensuring research benefits participants and key stakeholders, therefore, there is a need to engage communities in the research process.

Importantly, we discuss the language barriers in treatment access and how they prevent migrant communities from receiving emphatic and adequate care. For example, at the Flemish level, substance use treatment services do not have translators paid for, and that’s a political choice, consequently impacting accessibility.

Moving on, the conversation touches on how urgent medical care is defined and the critical role general practitioners play in determining whether a migrant’s medical needs qualify as urgent. This is important to consider as it has wide-ranging implications for how migrants access healthcare services.

She has led multiple policy-oriented research projects and published extensively on equitable treatment in this field. They discuss the importance of research co-production, its requirements and how to give back to participants, and how to improive substance use treatment services to better serve migrants.

Finally, Dr de Kock provides insight into how a holistic and multifactorial analysis when examining substance use among migrants can be done. Collecting and analysing the right metadata is essential to gaining a nuanced understanding of migrant substance use patterns and the structural barriers they face.

This episode focuses on important work needed for the identification of gaps in current treatment services, and the steps needed to build a more inclusive and equitable approach to substance use care for migrants and refugees.

Listen now on Spotify