Breaking health barriers for culturally and linguistically diverse Australian women

Over 30% of Australians were born overseas and CALD Australian women experience the combination of disadvantages when it comes to their health. Major reasons include: poor education; cultural prohibitions regarding health issues; difficulties with appointments, costs, and translations; and language barriers also prevent health literacy on the internet. 
 
School researchers have targeted this lapse in the past two years, coming up with two sets of multi-lingual culturally-sensitive videos giving evidence-based information on contraceptive measures and health promotion to improve midlife mental and physical health. 
 
Contraceptive choices videos 
 
Danielle Mazza, Jessica Botfield, Jessie Zeng, Claudia Morando-Stokoe, Noushin Arefadib 
 
Teenage pregnancies can easily lead to increased teenage births that have a chance of leading to poor health for the woman and the child. Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) women are most vulnerable with regard to having low contraceptive use, bringing into play the less reliable means of birth control, and experiencing a higher probability of unwanted pregnancy. 
 
LARC methods are proven to effectively decrease researchers’ chance of unintended pregnancy and despite this, multiple challenges related to uptake of LARC methods have been experienced in Australia due to lack of awareness, prejudice and misconceptions among them. 
 
In the not too distant past, the research study known as the EXTEND-PREFER Study that is linked to the SPHERE Centre of Research Excellence showed that young women from the CALD background with the age bracket of between 16 to 25 years may improve their contraceptive knowledge by 41 per cent through the use of online educational videos. 
 
The videos reviewed in the study can be co-designed with young women from priority CALD origins, who have Arabic, Cantonese, English, Hindi and Mandarin as their primary languages. Based on the positive outcomes of the study, the videos are currently shared with multicultural women/health, and general health web sites as well as on Face book/Menos
 
Supported by the Department of Health and Aged Care, EXTEND-PREFER incorporated the input of such agencies as the Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health and the Centre for Excellence in Rural Sexual Health, University of Melbourne. 
 
The study lead’s Professor Daniella Mazza AM stated “The support that has been provided to the young women in this study to obtain LARC and the education regarding contraceptives is essential in ULTRA to help these women avoid unplanned pregnancies. 
 
Contained in the videos are features such as types of hormones in the contraceptives, how effective the contraceptive is, how to use it, insert it and remove, how long to use it, cost, if prescription is required, how it affects bleeding, if the contraceptive has non-contraceptive benefits, if it protects against STIs and side effects. 
 
Find out more about the study at spherecre
 
Midlife health videos 
 
Jane Fisher, Flavia Cicuttini, KarIn Hammarberg 
As for women, there is a need to encourage them to age well because midlife has been illustrated over and over as an effective period in which healthy aging can be determined; and given that women now live longer than men, this might be the time that would determine how the rest of their years would look like. 
 
“It is possible to control some but not all elements that lead to good health in older age during midlife,” said Professor Jane Fisher a Head of Global and Women’s Health unit in GS. This means that the information concerning making better choices should be readily available at the times it is needed, in formats that are easy to understand, and consist of actionable recommendations for the community. 
 
“We had collaborated with the team of the CRE Women and Non-Communicable Diseases CREWaND, a collaborative center with the funding from the NHMRC based on the University of Queensland and we pinned down that the women from CALD backgrounds don’t have enough access to the online health materials especially those for menopausal and midlife health. 
 
That piece of research was to a large extent done by Dr Karin Hammarberg. “We decided to use short videos to convey health promoting messages as it was revealed that video animations are promising in the domain of the patient information, especially regarding its impact on the knowledge,” she continued, “There are scripts, subtitles in the videos and it has been noted that much attention has be paid for making the animations as diverse as possible and showing cultural diverse women. ” 
 
Flavia Cicuttini is a Professor and Head of Musculoskeletal Epidemiology at our School; she noted that the areas identified lined up well with her focus: healthy joints, gain, strength, joint, and cardiovascular link. “It was quite engaging to have already produced some animated videos in various languages on the same topics; and collaborating with Jane and her team was too big an opportunity to let go. ” 
 
There are a number of videos around the following key topics, and include information on staying well, how to tell if you should seek health support, and how to avoid costly unnecessary medical procedures:There are a number of videos around the following key topics, and include information on staying well, how to tell if you should seek health support, and how to avoid costly unnecessary medical procedures: