Our Story

More than 96,000 Afghan immigrants and refugees have resettled in the USA from Afghanistan. Our community has decades of lived experience through war, trauma, and crisis.

Afghan Health Initiative (AHI), is a grass-roots non-profit organization in the State of Washington founded by current and former immigrants and refugees who were trying to navigate the complexities of their new lives. Today, we are the only official nonprofit organization registered under the State of Washington with lived experience catering to the changing needs and health disparities facing Afghan immigrants in our community. 

AHI provides culturally proficient and linguistically appropriate social support services and health promotion advocacy to immigrants and refugees from Afghanistan in King County. AHI’s mission is to serve the immigrant and refugee population in Washington State by promoting community-based public health interventions which target social determinants of health thereby increasing equal access to health, education, and economic independence. Afghan Health Initiative holds a strong commitment to ensure the voices of Afghan and other refugee populations are not only heard and counted in data, but their needs are known and met through equitable culturally and linguistically appropriate preventative health and social services.

AHI was founded to help immigrant and refugee communities maximize their potential toward a better future while acculturating into their new lives in the United States. To help facilitate this vision, AHI provides a host of social service tools and programs to promote well-being, healthy life trajectories, and self-sufficiency.