Equal access to health and wellbeing
Priority Primary Care Centres
Through the Priority Primary Care Centres initiative, DH set up 29 Priority Primary Care Centres across Victoria to alleviate the burden on emergency departments (DH: $47.60m in 2022–23). In 2022–23 the centres provided free GP-led care to more than 15,000 culturally and linguistically diverse people without Medicare cards such as people seeking asylum and international students who needed urgent care but not an emergency response.
Life! program
The Life! program developed a three-year culturally and linguistically diverse program reform strategy to increase program uptake in multicultural communities (DH: $5.20m in 2022–23). The program helps Victorians to reduce their risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease through free group courses and telephone health coaching to adults.
In 2022–23 the program:
- engaged 74 multicultural groups, including people from Chinese, Vietnamese and Arabic-speaking backgrounds, to provide nutrition, stress management and physical health supports
- engaged health professionals, interpreters and bilingual facilitators to deliver 14 evidence-based and culturally relevant Healthy Living sessions addressing health risks and healthy behaviours for multicultural communities
- partnered with 12 community-led organisations to establish culturally responsive referral pathways for patients from multicultural backgrounds to reduce their risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke.
Reengaging Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Clients for a Breast Screen
BreastScreen Victoria re-engaged with clients from non–English speaking backgrounds through the Reengaging Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Clients for a Breast Screen initiative to address lower rates of breast screening among women with multicultural backgrounds.
In 2022–23 the initiative successfully:
- contacted 1,775 clients, of which 88 per cent attended screening
- reached 5,033 lapsed clients from 15 language groups through in-language SMS and 3,314 through outbound in-language calls
- screened 223 new clients through 26 language group bookings with in-person interpreters
- provided 6,032 clients with multilingual resources and translated materials via SMS.
Mental Health Practitioners Initiative
Through the Mental Health Practitioners (MHP) Initiative, the Victorian Government provided funding for MHPs in specialist schools with secondary-aged enrolments (DE: $5.00m in 2022–23). In 2022–23 MHPs supported 4,336 English as an Additional Language students and 2,736 students from refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds to increase mental health promotion and prevention strategies. DE also partnered with the national centre of excellence in youth mental health, Orygen, to develop a practice resource for MHPs to support the mental health and wellbeing of culturally diverse young people in Victoria.
Gambler’s Help Multicultural Program
The Gambler’s Help Multicultural Program provided culturally appropriate services to minimise community and individual personal, health, social and financial harm that arises from gambling (DJCS: $1.10m in 2022–23). Seven partner organisations were funded to deliver services focused on counselling and community engagement initiatives.
Key activities included:
- therapeutic counselling and financial support services that engaged about 460 people across Victoria
- community development, education and awareness raising including in-language resources that reached 70,000 people through community engagement efforts
- providing small grants to community organisations to develop creative approaches to encourage community conversations around gambling harm.
Case study
Building Bridges Project – Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health
Through DH’s Community Grants program, the Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health delivered the Building Bridges Project. This was one-year advocacy and research project that enabled people with migrant and refugee backgrounds to take part in ‘share circles’ focus group discussions and action research to inform the mental health reform process.
The project used a community-based participation approach to conduct the share circles. This allowed Building Bridges to collect rich, in-depth information about the complexity of migrant and refugee women’s experiences of mental health and wellbeing. The project engaged 99 migrant and refugee women, non-binary, and gender diverse people from 21 cultural groups and eight stakeholder organisations across Victoria.
The Building Bridges research report has contributed to the evidence base on how sociocultural factors, such as access to health information and services, the migration process and gender and cultural norms, disproportionately affect and shape mental health outcomes for migrant and refugee women. It also highlighted how to strengthen existing understandings of mental health and wellbeing, and help-seeking practices.
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