Communities help shape health communications
Recently the Barwon South West Public Health Unit partnered with Cultura at the Northern Community Hub for a health pop-up event aimed at multicultural communities.
The event aimed to gather community feedback and thoughts on how they want to receive information about health issues, along with feedback on local health projects.
Communities were registered and gathered in small groups and were asked a series of questions about accessing health information and the biggest health issues that they felt were affecting their community.
Participants that attended were from Karen, Karenni, Dari, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish and Swahili speaking communities.
The findings will then be used by Cultura and the Barwon South West Public Health Unit to tailored future communications and health messaging to multicultural communities. It will also provide Barwon Health with guidance on what health issues these communities are facing day-to-day.
When asked how they felt about being consulted on these issues, Rita from the local Iraqi community was pleased that their voice was being heard,
“I felt that my opinion is respected," she said.
Mobaraka Yaqobi from the local Hazara community said, "I felt that I was part of Geelong community."
The event included lunch, dancing and a pop-up vaccination session offering flu, COVID-19 and HPV vaccinations and was attended by approximately 60 community members.