We’re proud to share the work of our NYU-TIES colleague, Alice Wuermli, and her coauthors, who have just published the first major paper of their ongoing pre-natal birth cohort study in Bangladesh.

This cohort profile paper outlines the study's foundations, sets the stage for future publications, and offers a powerful reminder of why early childhood research matters—not just for developmental science, but for creating real-world impact in diverse contexts. At Global TIES we are committed to bridging rigorous evidence with meaningful action.

Read Alice’s post to learn more about the study’s insights and the implications they hold for early childhood initiatives. Kudos to Alice and the entire research team for their hard work and dedication.

Millions of refugees around the world suffer in silence, not because they lack a voice, but because their pain is misunderstood or mismeasured.

On World Refugee Day, we uplift the voices and lived realities of displaced communities and call for deeper, more culturally responsive care.

At TIES, we work hard to partner with local communities and integrate methods that capture participant voices directly. For example, the paper we reshare today highlights some of the qualitative work we have done as part of the iRRRd study, led by Rohingya researchers and collaborators, to explore cultural concepts of distress (CCDs) among Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar. It identifies five locally meaningful expressions of emotional suffering, like tenshon and bishi sinta, that often go unrecognized by standard mental health tools.

As we act in solidarity with refugees, we must design support systems that reflect how communities themselves understand and communicate distress.

Excerpt: Rohingya refugees residing in Bangladesh have been exposed to profound trauma in addition to ongoing daily stressors of living in the refugee camps. Accurate assessments of mental health burden and their impact among this population require culturally sensitive tools that remain lacking in this context. The purpose of this study was to characterize salient cultural concepts of distress (CCDs), their causes, consequences, and approaches to treatment, among Rohingya refugees living in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, to help inform future measurement and intervention design.

Authors:Kathy Trang, Caroline Hiott, AK Rahim, Shafiqur Rahman, Alice J Wuermli

KEYWORDS: Mental Health, Rohingya

In this third brief in our series, we outline the process and strategies used as we piloted multiple data collection tools that were being considered for use in several large-scale research studies with the Rohingya in Cox's Bazar. This brief aims to provide context and a path forward for future researchers to deliver quality research in this, and other, complex research environments with the ultimate goal of informing the types, design, and delivery of services to support families and foster resilience in these contexts for generations to come.