Saida Abdi
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Assistant Professor
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School of Social Work
Peters Hall
1404 Gortner Ave
St Paul, MN 55108
- 612-625-1220
- sabdi@umn.edu
Areas of interest
Refugee youth and families; refugee and immigrant mental health; trauma systems therapy; building culturally responsive interventions.
PhD, Social Work/Sociology, Boston University
MSW, Boston University
MA, University of Ottawa
BA, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario
I am a clinical social worker and professor of social work practice. I have worked for more than 20 years with refugee youth and families in the diaspora, and am an expert in refugee trauma and resilience. My area of focus is building individual, family, and community resilience and improving the responsiveness of systems of care to the needs of refugee and immigrant communities. My passion is developing trauma-informed culturally-clinically integrated services that are led or co-led by community members to enhance capacity building and ensure ownership and engagement. I train and consult nationally and internationally with organizations that are developing/providing mental health services for refugees and immigrants. I am trained in Trauma Systems, and I am part of the team that developed Trauma Systems Therapy for Refugees(TST-R) at Boston Children's Hospital.
I recently received a grant for a study to determine culturally and linguistically appropriate methods for African immigrants to receive health care virtually.
Dr. Abdi's Selected Activities
- Member of the state-wide University of Minnesota's Disparities in COVID Response Task Force
- Co-chair of the refugee panel for the 2021 Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development
- Affiliate of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN)
- Presenter, Twin Cities Public Television/Somali TV show: Coping with COVID
- Presenter: 2020 Multicultural Virtual Summit: Difficult Dialogues and Healing Conversations, hosted by the Minnesota Psychological Association and the Minnesota Association for Marriage and Family Therapy
- Member (appointed by California governor) of the Selection Committee for the California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine
Resources
- Trauma Informed Interpreting Manual: A Socio-Culturally, Linguistically-Responsive, and Trauma-Informed Approach to Mental Health Interpretation | The National Child Traumatic Stress Network
- Talking with your Children about Islamophobia and Hate-Based Violence | The National Child Traumatic Stress Network
- Creating Effective Child- and Family-Focused Disaster Behavioral Health Messages on Social Media | The National Child Traumatic Stress Network
- Crisis Toolkit: Communicating with Diverse Communities during COVID | Office of Academic Clinical Affairs - University of Minnesota
- Parenting in New Context: Strategies for Practitioners Supporting Refugee and Immigrant Caregivers | The National Child Traumatic Stress Network
- How Trauma Can Impact Parenting (YouTube) | The National Child Traumatic Stress Network
Betancourt, T. S., Berent, J. M., Freeman, J., Frounfelker, R. L., Brennan, R. T., Abdi, S., ... & Creswell, J. W. (2020). Family-Based Mental Health Promotion for Somali Bantu and Bhutanese Refugees: Feasibility and Acceptability Trial. Journal of Adolescent Health, 66(3), 336-344.
Ellis, B. H., Abdi, S. M., & Winer, J. P. (2020). Mental health practice with immigrant and refugee youth: A socioecological framework. American Psychological Association.
Ellis, B. H., Lincoln, A. K., Abdi, S. M., Nimmons, E. A., Issa, O., & Decker, S. H. (2020). “We All Have Stories”: Black Muslim Immigrants’ Experience With the Police. Race and Justice, 10(3), 341-362.
Betancourt, T. S., Frounfelker, R. L., Berent, J. M., Gautam, B., Abdi, S., Abdi, A., ... & Mishra, T. (2019). Addressing mental health disparities in refugee children through family and community-based prevention. Humanitarianism and mass migration: Confronting the world crisis, 137-64.
Abdi, S. M. (2018). Mental health of migrant children. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Global Public Health.
Ellis Heidi, B., Miller, A. B., Baldwin, H., & Abdi, S. (2011). New directions in refugee youth mental health services: Overcoming barriers to engagement. Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma, 4(1), 69-85.
Ellis, B. H., Abdi, S. M., Miller, A. B., White, M. T., & Lincoln, A. K. (2015). Protective factors for violence perpetration in Somali young adults: The role of community belonging and neighborhood cohesion. Psychology of Violence, 5(4), 384.