Working women to get health message

Bilingual health educators are taking health messages to women on the factory floor under an innovative health promotion project to prevent depression and promote good health.

Health Minister John Thwaites has announced nine projects to share in $330,000 under the Government’s Primary Care Partnerships program to reach isolated groups in the community.

Working Women is one of the projects which aims to get key messages to women who are traditionally hard to reach by going to factories and community centres where women from culturally-diverse backgrounds often met.

‘General health promotion messages often fail to get heard by people from culturally-diverse backgrounds,’ Mr Thwaites said.

‘An evaluation of Working Women will look at how best to recruit and train bilingual health educators to deliver the message to women from diverse backgrounds in a variety of settings including factories.’

Mr Thwaites said the State Government’s ground-breaking Burden of Disease study, released in January, identified depression as a key health issue—with women in the northern and western suburbs having a higher rate of disability than the State average.

‘This project is helping address the health impacts of isolation, depression and anxiety. The educators also assist women with sexual and reproductive health concerns, mental health and occupational health and safety issues,’ he said.

Some of the other projects to be funded include:

• Building relationships with newly-arrived refugees and involving people from a culturally and linguistically diverse background in developing sensitive health policies and practices;

• Encouraging rural outdoor workers to take greater care of their health;

• Developing gender sensitive practices to help people in isolated rural towns, such as mothers experiencing depression, Aboriginal women and newly arrived migrants;

• Identifying gaps in access to translation and interpreting services in rural areas.