Mark Deverell from MRC North talks to Stephanie Dalton about the United in Tasmania, cross cultural art collaboration, implemented as a way of reaching out empathically to recently arrived immigrants not familiar with Australia's health service benefits. Video Rod Thompson
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00:00 We're gathered here to demonstrate what's been happening as part of the United in Tasmania
00:11 program this year.
00:13 The United in Tasmania program's been designed to increase health literacy for women from
00:18 culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
00:20 A lot of the people that we work with have come from countries where the health care
00:26 is not as good as it is in Australia and also the health awareness is not something that
00:31 a lot of women have been afforded to.
00:34 So it's about getting people to understand that there are options for early detection
00:38 and early intervention for a lot of chronic illnesses and in particular we've been focusing
00:44 on cancer.
00:45 Because what we've found over the years working with people is that just delivering information
00:50 is not enough.
00:51 There's a lot of stigma that sits around discussions around health and dying and things like that
00:57 so we use program based activities as a way to actually get a message across.
01:04 We've used craft, we've used sewing groups, we've used, and food is always another good
01:08 one that actually brings people together and enables us to actually talk about really key
01:12 messages and it's done in a way that really is not as threatening and it's slowly introducing
01:20 people to some of these concepts.
01:23 It's been very successful.
01:24 The United in Tasmania is the third iteration in the United series.
01:29 The first one, United in Pink, at the end of that program 100% of the women over the
01:34 age of 40 went on to have breast screening.
01:38 So we think that the programs have been extremely beneficial.
01:42 This program has engaged with 50 women so that's 50 more women who have greater understanding
01:47 now about health literacy.
01:48 [BLANK_AUDIO]