What is the Health in My Language program?
From June 2024 our national Health in My Language program will focus on sexual and reproductive health.
We will address migrant and refugee women's intersecting structural and interpersonal barriers to accessing sexual and reproductive health services. We will also build national awareness to increase migrant and refugee women’s knowledge of and access to sexual and reproductive health services through in-language health information and education.
Health in My Language is funded by the Commonwealth Government to run until June 2025 and deliver education sessions to migrant and refugee communities in every state and territory.
Background
Health in My Language began in 2022 as a national response program to address barriers to vaccine literacy and vaccine update during the COVID-19 pandemic. The strong groundwork that we laid in building a national workforce over the past two years means that the program was perfectly positioned to evolve into an important new phase, with a focus on sexual and reproductive health. This delivers on the 2023 Senate Committee recommendation made in the ‘Ending postcode lottery’ in response to the Inquiry into Universal Access to Reproductive Healthcare which identified the Health in My Language Program as an important national platform for advancing sexual and reproductive health equity.
Who are we working with?
MCWH is currently working with seven partner organisations in each state and territory to deploy a team of highly skilled Bilingual Health Educators who will received accredited trained to deliver health education in over 20 languages/dialects, using our unique MCWH health education model and quality standards.
Our valued partners are:
- True Relationships and Reproductive Health - Queensland
- Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors - STARTTS - New South Wales
- Women's Health Matters - The Australian Capital Territory
- Australian Red Cross- Tasmania
- Australian Red Cross - South Australia
- Australian Red Cross - Northern Territory
- Ishar Multicultural Women's Health Services - Western Australia
- We would like to acknowledge Melaleuca Australia as our Northern Territory partner from 2022 to December 2023.
Updates and impact 2022 - 2024
The first phase of Health in My Language ran from 2022 - 2024 and made a huge impact on bilingual communities. We’d like to thank and acknowledge the incredible work of our partners in coordinating this nation-wide workforce with such enthusiasm and talent. Here are some of our impact stories.
Media Release: Health in My Language COVID-19 Program to bring a new focus on Sexual and Reproductive Health for migrant and refugee communities.
Media Release: Multilingual COVID-19 Health Program Helps Improve Employment Outcomes for Migrant Women in Australia
Bilingual health program receives funding boost in preparation for winter flu season.
