Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma

The Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma (HPRT)is a multi-disciplinary program that has been pioneering the health and mental health care of traumatized refugees and civilians in areas of conflict/post-conflict and natural disasters for over three decades. Its clinical program serves as a global model that has been replicated worldwide. HPRT designed and implemented the first curriculum for the mental health training of primary care practitioners in settings of human conflict, post-conflict, and natural disasters. Its training activities have been successfully conducted in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cambodia, Croatia, Japan, and the United States. HPRT’s landmark scientific studies have demonstrated the medical and mental health impact of mass violence as well as the cultural effectiveness of its clinical treatment and training programs. Working closely with Ministries of Health throughout the world, HPRT has developed community-based mental health services primarily in existing local primary health care systems. It has also successfully established linkages to major foreign university settings. HPRT’s bicultural partnerships with international collaborators have resulted in culturally effective and sustainable programs that rely primarily on local human resources and indigenous healing systems. HPRT is currently administered by Massachusetts General Hospital, one of America’s oldest and most prestigious hospitals, which is a major teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School.

The Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma has spent 32 years caring for the health and mental needs of survivors of mass violence and torture through a combined practice of clinical experience and medical research. Its vision has remained the same throughout this time:

To bring the advances of modern medical science to those members of our society who in spite of their great suffering have little access to care.