Announcements

Name: Prof. Jaya A. R. Dantas
Affiliations: Curtin School of Population Health, Curtin University, Bentley 6102, Australia
Interests: health equity amongst vulnerable populations and culturally and linguistically diverse communities (CALDs); post-conflict adversity in women and youth; social determinants of health

“Stuck Due to COVID”: Applying the Power and Control Model to Migrant and Refugee Women’s Experiences of Family Domestic Violence in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic”
by Azriel Lo, Georgia Griffin, Hana Byambadash, Erin Mitchell and Jaya A. R. Dantas
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2025, 22(4), 627; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph22040627

The following is an interview with Prof. Jaya A. R. Dantas:

1. Congratulations on your recent publication! Could you briefly introduce yourself and your current research focus to our readers?
Yes, my name is Professor Jaya Dantas and I’m a professor of international health at Curtin School of Population Health at Columbia in WA. I also have a leadership role in the university. I am the Dean International in the faculty, where I look after the global positioning portfolio, which involves the recruitment of students into Curtin for our trans-national campuses, our collaborations and partnerships, the mobility of staff and students, as well as research that can take place with international partners.
That’s my role, but with my research I have worked for 37 years in six countries. I’m originally from India and I grew up and finished my master’s degree in India, and taught at a women’s university in Mumbai, India, which is a big city. And then I moved to Africa and I lived in Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda. That’s where my research interest in refugee and migrant health started.
I have broad knowledge of topics of refugee and migrant health and education, but underpinning those are things like the social determinants of health, health equity, women’s health, the health of young people, as well as infectious diseases that impact vulnerable populations.
I work in all of these areas and I have been at Curtin University for 21 years, and in the 21 years I have grown to be a professor and I have my own research team with my own research funding and my own research program, and I am undertaking several projects. In particular, these projects involve migrant women, displaced Ukrainian people, and youth at risk.

2. You worked extensively with migrant communities. So, how did the cultural practice or local knowledge inform your participatory approaches to improving the health outcome? Or in other words, how did they influence the design and implementation of the interventions?
One of the things that I always do is I always use participatory co-design approaches and I always work with community help. Because for me, working in community health prevention is much better than a person going to the hospital. So, in participatory approaches, what happens is people take charge of their own health and well-being.
They get an understanding that these are the things that impact us and because these things impact us, we are able to make the behavioral change needed for better health outcomes for us. So, for this I work with community organizations, I work with communities, and I work with different groups, always within WA.
Overseas, in India, in Uganda, in Rwanda, and in many countries of the world, many of my PhD students also undertake global health research. One of the things that we have to do is to listen to the voices of the community. Because only when you listen to the voices of the community do you understand the barriers and challenges they might face, and you then have interventions that actually are much more beneficial to those communities. That’s what I have always done.
I use several approaches; I’ll use participatory approaches, action research, auto-voice developing interventions, as well as research that specifically looks at nutrition and looks at psychosocial well-being in all of these populations. So, understanding the cultural context is critically important while doing the research that I undertake in community health.

3. What is a common oversight in global health policies aimed at vulnerable populations that your research could help to correct?
Some of the common oversights are that you can do a large epidemiological study or a large population-based study and gain information from that study, but unless you actually listen to the voices of certain groups, there are certain marginalized groups, and there are certain vulnerable populations. Those groups might have different priorities and needs. Then you can tailor your interventions, or you can tailor your programs to actually suit those needs.
This is something that is often challenging in global health research. So, for example, we know that now there is global misinformation about vaccinations. So, how do you counter that so that you can actually educate the communities and find out? Why is it that they are not getting vaccinated, or their children are not getting vaccinated? Is there a certain amount of fear? Is there a certain amount of misinformation? Are they getting information from sources that might not be informed? Health-informed, you know, because the vaccinations do make a difference.
It’s the same way when I’m working on projects with young refugee people. We look at intergenerational trauma, we look at intergenerational conflict. And the cultural aspects, when I’m looking at family and domestic violence in communities, we look at the aspects that are impacting these communities and the challenges they face. One of these oversights is that when you do large studies, you miss the smaller populations that need to be understood, and those are the populations that need health interventions that actually apply to them.
Even in developed countries, not everyone might understand English in the same way, not everyone has that language fluency. Or there might be the elderly who have more challenges; maybe they’re not computer literate. So having only messages online or on the phone might not suit certain groups. Because you’re relying on the understanding that everyone has a computer, everyone has a laptop, everyone has a phone, and everyone has Internet. You might have a phone, but you might have no Internet. These challenges are in terms of interventions, but you can have groups with mental health issues who prefer online intervention because of the cultural issues, the stigma issues, the shame issues. For them, an intervention that’s online might work. It’s just understanding all of these nuances and aspects that is important.

4. So, the key point is always to talk about a specific issue rather than the bigger picture?
Yes, specific issues and different population groups. That is health equity. Health equity is to understand that not everyone is equal. We need to understand equality is not about equity. Equity is understanding that people have different needs than you have. If you can try and meet those different needs, then there are better health outcomes for the whole population, which in the long run has better economic advantages.

5. How has modern technology such as mobile data collections or telemedicine enhanced your research?
Most of my research involves primary data collection in communities. When COVID hit, we shifted some interventions online. In some cases it worked, but in others—like online physical activity programs—it didn’t, since participants needed a laptop or a large screen to follow along. This was often a challenge. Telemedicine is growing worldwide, enabling online appointments and healthcare access for remote populations. However, it requires reliable internet and a trusting clinician–patient relationship, which can be problematic. While telemedicine works in many cases, some still prefer face-to-face interaction.

6. Based on your experience publishing with us, what aspects of our editorial process most impact your other experiences?
I have greatly enjoyed working with IJERPH—both publishing my own work and supporting my master’s and PhD students in publishing theirs. It’s been a positive experience for all of us.
I found the process and the format very good. I’ve found interacting with the editorial team very good, I’ve found the review process also fairly smooth. And at the same time, proactive in timely reviews, timely completions. I only think that in many ways, if you actually maintain the integrity of the reviewing and publication process, as well as the impact of the journals by checking all aspects of the research that gets published, the quality measures would be really good. 

We sincerely appreciate Professor Dantas for this insightful discussion and her valuable contributions to IJERPH. We look forward to her continued work in bridging gaps in migrant health and digital access and wish her ongoing success in creating both academic and societal impact.