Building Health Knowledge Across Multicultural Communities

LiverWELL has been busy engaging with Multicultural communities. This comes as a push to increase awareness to the wider community and reach out to people who may be at risk of hepatitis B.

LiverWELL has been collaborating with the Australian Multicultural Community Service (AMCS) in delivering multiple sessions to their elderly social support groups. These groups represented many cultural groups, including Vietnamese, Filipino, Polish, Mauritians, French, Italian, and Greek. Along with their joy in singing, dancing, playing games, and socialising, these groups have opportunities to hear from guest speakers. The group identified that it was important to get tested for hepatitis B and C, especially having migrated to Australia many years ago. The attendees asked many questions about hepatitis B transmission and prevention, sharing stories and experiences they had recently or many years ago in their home countries of birth. There were many interesting discussions, and the attendees enjoyed a fun quiz at the end with prizes.

Over the past month, LiverWELL has also been working with the Adult Migrant English Program (AMEP) to deliver sessions to their English students. LiverWELL has been collaborating with Chisholm Institute, to deliver sessions to their Berwick Evening classes, as well as to North Melbourne Language and Learning. Students were able to practice their English as well as improve their health literacy regarding hepatitis B transmission/prevention, testing, vaccination and treatment/monitoring through stories and flashcard activities.

Teachers appreciated the lengths LiverWELL went to make the sessions accessible, fun and engaging. Many students received workbooks, as well as additional resources in English and in their own language.