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I hope to build relationships within and beyond the lab, making connections with people who are directly invovled the environmental justice community. I also hope to continue expanding my knowledge about the different frameworks and methodologies the lab uses as well as gain more experience with community-engaged research and apply that to my future career.

The article has been referenced a few times since it was published, however the recent publication, lack of research being done on this topic, or the lack of definitive results from this paper have prevented it from being referenced extensively.

The bibliography shows this article was written with a significant amount of historical research into both the incidents discussed and also the materials and technical findings of the investigations.

• I looked at current French visa laws which allow for a number of humanitarian requests, including family, fear of life, and medical treatment. The current protocols do still allow for easily obtainable short stay medical visas which require the medical report from a French doctor, the long term visas have a similar application but are more challenging to obtain.
• I also researched which countries have significant numbers of tourists traveling for medical reasons, the countries in Europe, Northern America, and Asia have the most applications for medical stays in order to access otherwise unavailable treatment. There is also however significant travel to countries with less developed health infrastructure and regulation for inexpensive treatment.
• Finally, as this article focused only on the normal application process of immigrants I looked into how the humanitarian allowances for residence in France was effected during the recent increase in refugees traveling through Europe. France is actually planning to close some refugee camps against the arguments of humanitarian groups due to strain on resources, while the government wishes to find alternative locations for the refugees they claim the camp in Calais will be closed by winter regardless.

Source: The Guardian sept. 26th 2016 edition

• “The response to the disaster was recognized as a bureaucratic nightmare that, regardless of the intent of the federal and state governments, appeared to homeowners as a sign of their having been abandoned.” (16)
• “And the patterns with the family too. A family is—for as close as we—were and I mean every birthday, with a big family… And now, it’s the closeness that’s all gone. And it’s not just the distance. You can blame it on the distance, use the distance as an excuse. But even when we get together, nobody wants to stay. Everyone wants to get home.” (12)
• “I haven’t had a mail box in three years, OK. I mean symbolically that’s it right now. I don’t even have a mailbox. You know, if you want to put it in one sentence. I am just tired of not having a mailbox, ya know, because I don’t know where I live.” (9)

The main argument is supported through several methods, first the use of demographic statistics on the patients suffering from mental illness after several significant disasters. The experiences of patients with severe mental illness are also presented as supporting evidence of the complicated causes of disaster related mental illness. Finally the article includes data and theories presented in several other papers to provide a basis for the claims of the authors regarding the future studies of mental illness and the support systems that would be ideal in minimizing the trauma of a disaster.