School of Language, Culture, and Society

Massarra Eiwaz-Ransom

By Emily Willis, CLA Student Writer - September 18, 2024

Massarra Eiwaz-Ransom, M.P.H ‘18, M.A. ‘19, left Iraq ten days before the US-led invasion in 2003. At 10 years old, Eiwaz-Ransom made her way to Syria with her family and watched her city and country bombed on television.

“I remember we were just sitting in Syria waiting for this to end,” said Eiwaz-Ransom. “While in Syria, my parents made sure we focused on our education and attending school, not wanting us to get behind.”

Eiwaz-Ransom and her family returned to Iraq as they thought the war had ended. After experiencing bombings and persecution as a family of Christian faith, they returned to Syria again, but this time, they lived for 6 years with the hope that they would return home one day. With everything that was happening in Iraq, it became more clear that they didn't have a way back. Syria was a welcoming country to them, but it was never a place where they could live, go to school and work for the rest of their lives, given the rules that prevent Iraqis from working there. So Eiwaz-Ransom and her family applied to the United Nations and chose to be resettled in Portland as refugees in 2008 with the help of Lutheran Community Services Northwest as their resettling agency.

“When arriving in Portland, it was impossible for us to process the emotions of losing your home, your second home, memories, and extended family,” Eiwaz-Ransom described. “We went from surviving to living and making new friends and memories. A part of me was stuck in the past and also in the future.”

Eiwaz-Ransom enrolled in Clackamas High School as a junior while also learning English simultaneously. She was in an afterschool enrichment program, where students from Lewis & Clark College showcased various careers in science, when she was immediately drawn to psychology, particularly behavioral neuroscience. As a refugee, she found herself holding a deep passion for wanting to advocate and support Portland’s immigrant and refugee community by pursuing research in behavioral health..

Inspired by the visiting students, Eiwaz-Ransom enrolled at Lewis & Clark College and was a research assistant in labs at both Lewis & Clark and Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) throughout her four years. Her time spent working in the labs and doing her internship at Lutheran Community Services NW with Iraqi women, helped inform her senior thesis.

“Throughout my time working in behavioral health labs,” Eiwas-Ransom explained. “I kept discovering a lack of research literature on refugee and immigrant needs.”

Eiwaz-Ransom worked with Iraqi women refugees in Portland, in collaboration with Lutheran Community Services Northwest, to record their needs and concerns about being refugees and needing to support their families. Through the Pathways to Wellness support groups, Eiwaz-Ransom identified services for Iraqi women that were in need, like comprehensive healthcare, family and community support, and welfare. After a successful research study that helped to inform support services at Lutheran Community Services Northwest, the organization offered Eiwaz-Ransom a full-time position as a Clinical Cross Cultural Mental Health Case Manager, working with immigrant and refugee cases on a day-to-day basis and assisting in the development of long and short-term treatment plans.

Eiwaz-Ransom wanted to continue her passion of conducting research looking into immigrant and refugee healthcare, helping to shape policies around supporting refugees in the Portland area. It was a colleague of hers at Lutheran that suggested she look into earning an anthropology degree, so Eiwaz-Ransom reached out to Kenneth Maes, associate professor of anthropology, who encouraged her to apply.

“The first term in the applied anthropology program was one of the hardest school semesters I’ve ever experienced,” said Eiwaz-Ransom. “But the program’s cohort of students really supported me and kept me going. After that, I felt right at home.”

Not only was Eiwaz-Ransom working towards her master’s degree in applied anthropology from the School of Language, Culture, and Society, but she was also taking classes to receive a public health graduate degree from the College of Public Health. This unique double-degree would give her the public health training to deliver effective community lead services, but also the ethnographic knowledge to understand the broader context of working with refugees.

“I was in safe hands while a student of two colleges, I had so much support from my anthropology advisor Kenneth Maes and my public health degree advisor Chi Chunhuei,” explained Eiwaz-Ransom. “It was such a complementary experience and with two advisors who truly believed in my work and experience.”

Working with Lutheran Community Services Northwest again, Eiwaz-Ransom’s graduate thesis aimed to fill a critical need for ethnographic studies investigating how anti-immigrant, -Muslim, and -Arab rhetoric and policies, combined with chronic gaps in services, influence the everyday lives of Iraqi women refugees in the U.S. Eiwaz-Ransom documented the concerns and desires  of Iraqi women to better understand their expressions of frustration and uncertainty, and the effects of these feelings on their mental health and resettlement processes. Based on the qualitative study, the recommendation Eiwaz-Ransom offered was to push for more culturally appropriate therapy practices and greater involvement of Community Health Workers and Peer Support Specialists.

Now Eiwaz-Ransom works for the Oregon Home Care Commission (OHCC) as a policy analyst, specifically, as a Traditional Health Worker Program Coordinator. She organizes Community Health Work and Personal Health Navigator Trainings for in-home caregivers throughout the state. Eiwaz-Ransom ensures the trainings are  accessible to all caregivers, including offering programming in any language. She is also a co-chair for an Employee Resource Group within the state called Refugee and Immigrant Network (RaIN), where she strives to make the state system more inclusive, equitable, and supportive for immigrants and refugees employees, so employees feel they have a space that they belong to and a body of other employees that they can count on.  She does this work with state employees who identify as immigrants, refugees, or employees who are allies to immigrants and refugees. Outside of work, she is a commissioner with the New Portlander City Commission within the City of Portland, where she tries to support by elevating her community voices and needs when it comes to services that the City of Portland provides and policies they are supporting.

Eiwaz-Ransom feels lucky that she has always been surrounded by her family, her husband,  and friends who believed in her and always cheered her on every step. Her mother and father are her superheros, her three siblings are her rocks, and her husband is her “home.”

“One of the biggest lessons I walked away with from the anthropology program,” Eiwaz-Ransom explained, “is to be critical of how systems and programs are structured. Continually asking, is an effective program really effective for everyone? Effective to whom?”