African is New Face of Iowa Immigration, Cedar Falls Professor Says

Iowa's African immigrant population is growing, and Black Hawk County is one of the centers of that growth.

That was the message presented by Professor of Health Education Michele Devin at the CROW Forum: "Darfur to Denison: Iowa's Newest Refugees from Africa and Implications for Woman's Health Professionals."

“This is sort of the new face of Iowa,” she said. "We’re seeing many, many new languages and tribes and ethnicities that we’ve not seen in a state like Iowa up to now.”

Devin, who is also the director of the Iowa Center for Health Disparities, said the growth of African refugees in Iowa has accelerated greatly in the last two to three years. The growth is largely due to places that used to hire large numbers of illegal immigrants, such as meat packing plants, turning to legal refugee populations after federal crackdowns on illegal immigration.

In Black Hawk County, the largest new immigrant population is Burmese. But there are also a growing number of Africans, particularly from Liberia. There are 150-200 Liberians in the county, mostly in Waterloo, Devin said.

Other centers of African immigration across the state are Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Storm Lake and Marshalltown.

Devin said Des Moines has the second biggest population of Sudanese immigrants in the country, with around 8,000 people. In Cedar Rapids, she said, there are entire apartment buildings dominated by refugees from Burundi and the Congo.

Challenges for health professionals serving refugee populations include miscommunication and misunderstanding due to cross-cultural barriers, lower literacy rates and language barriers. There are also access issues such as financial and transportation barriers.

Post-traumatic stress disorder is an issue as well, as is cultural bereavement - grieving for the loss of the culture that was left behind.

"It's not easy to be a refugee. Getting used to life in Iowa can be very, very difficult," she said. "So we do see things like depression, anxiety, stress."