Last week was Harmony Week, throughout the week we wanted to highlight the important work Monash Health’s South East Public Health Unit (SEPHU) have been doing to ensure our cultural and linguistically diverse communities have access to the accurate and timely information they need.
In July 2022 the Strengthening Engagement for Multicultural Communities in the South East Project commenced. The project’s overarching purpose was to bring together and engage with multicultural grassroot organisations to provide capacity building opportunities and understand public health concerns from the community to inform effective communication and engagement strategies.
Catherine McGrath, Director Community Engagement and Silva Nazaretian, Senior Advisor Community Engagement joined Tuesday’s employee forum to provide an overview of the project and share insights gained.
The 6-month project resulted in each community organisation facilitating two focus groups and coordinating up to four health information sessions with their communities on a range of topics identified by the community organisations including: COVID-19, Monkeypox, family violence and mental health and wellbeing and many more.
“Throughout the project we learnt the value and importance of investing in community relationships and how we can create opportunities to work together. A focus for us going forward is how we strengthen and continue to develop these relationships and the importance of leveraging these relationships to help facilitate sharing of public health messages to multicultural communities,” said Catherine when reflecting on the project.
Sunny Duggal, President of Community Response Australia Inc also joined the forum to discuss the importance of community organisations like his working alongside Monash Health to bring his community’s concerns and priorities into focus as part of the project.
“When COVID-19 messages came from Monash Health during the lockdown period, we knew that this information was exactly what needed to be passed on to the community.” said Sunny.
Approved by David Bloxham
