AI-Generated Personalized Visualization of the Safe Place in Virtual Reality vs Traditional Safe Place Imagery: Randomized Controlled Trial.

Afghans are one of the world’s largest forcibly displaced populations, with 11 million Afghans forced from their homes, the majority being women and children. Despite growing numbers of Afghan refugees in the US, research on their health status, health determinants, and health care utilization remains scarce. Forcibly displaced immigrants face substantial health risks across the displacement continuum. In Afghanistan, health care access is limited: only 10% of the population lives within a 1-hour walk of a health care facility. Displacement itself is associated with war-related trauma, communicable disease, malnutrition, and unsanitary conditions. After resettlement, new barriers emerge as refugees navigate unfamiliar social services, employment, legal status, and sociocultural adaptation. Afghan women face particularly compounded risks for poorer health. In Afghanistan, restrictive sociocultural norms prohibit women from leaving home without a male relative or from seeking care from male clinicians, while a shortage of female clinicians further limits access. These constraints exist alongside low workforce participation (5%) and literacy (27%), contributing to higher morbidity among Afghan women compared with men.