Priorities to Commitments: A binational adapted-NGT for refugee health prioritization

In a two-day binational workshop (Calgary, July 2023), an adapted nominal group technique reduced 141 candidate refugee-health solutions to five priorities per resettlement phase.

• Why it matters: Priority-setting often lacks transparent design and meaningful participation from affected people, limiting how well research and policy agendas reflect shared needs across sectors.
• What they did: Clinicians, settlement providers, policymakers, and academics from six Canadian provinces, seven US states, and international organizations generated solutions via a pre-workshop survey and workshop deliberation, then used weighted ballots and separate votes for importance and actionability across three resettlement phases.
• The result: Double-criterion voting produced phase-specific mismatches between “most important” and “most actionable” priorities (e.g., Phase 1: 49.0% vs 64.7%; Phase 2: 69.2% vs 47.9%; Phase 3: 40.0% vs 39.6%), while mental health and funding were prominent in survey responses but not top-voted.