Bethel Assefa, LMSW, is completing a summer 2024 practicum with the Columbia-WHO Center for Global Mental Health as part of her MPH studies at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. In this role, she has supported the testing of the Flexible Interview for the ICD-11 (FLII-11), a population-level mental health assessment tool that is being piloted by various country-level teams around the world. As part of this work, she also supports the Tunisia country team in developing an Arabic version of the FLII-11, as well as supplementary tools to measure social vulnerability to climate change. Prior to public health school, Bethel worked as a psychotherapist for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence at a non-profit in NYC. In the future, Bethel hopes to merge her education and skills in mental health and public health by working in mental health and psychosocial support program design and implementation for refugees and forcibly displaced communities.
