The US resettled 72,515 refugees in 2000 (US Committee for Refugees, 2000). During resettlement, refugees must adapt to changes in housing, jobs, family relationships, and language. This adaptation process frequently produces what Williams and Berry (1991) call acculturative stress. Depression is associated with stress. Refugees have been found to experience five to eight times more depression and emotional distress than the host population. Among new refugees in Texas, 23.8% of adults are depressed as compared to a US population rate of 5.3%. Social support can buffer the stress associated with significant life changes, and among refugees, greater social support has been correlated with reduced depression. Thus, social support interventions to decrease stress and improve mental health outcomes for refugees are vital. The failure of current assistance programs to reduce or prevent depression may be due in part to the failure to address community-level support. Community-level (CL) support is conceptually defined as practical, informational and affective resources available in the refugees' local, regional and national environment. By improving existing environmental resources during resettlement, refugees may perceive more support. To date, however, the development of CL support interventions has been hampered by lack of descriptive data and valid and reliable measures of CL support for refugees. The purpose of this study is to explore properties of CL support for refugees and develop a CL support measure for Cuban refugees, who are a representative refugee group because they are forced to flee from political persecution, they suffer multiple losses, and they must adapt to many life changes. The study will be in two phases. Phase I will qualitatively examine CL support among a Cuban refugee population. Phase II will develop and pilot test a CL support instrument in Spanish for Cuban refugees.