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Understanding the needs of multicultural communities (VOICE partnership)

It's difficult for multicultural communities to access the services and information they need. These communities face social and structural disadvantages and often need greater support. The Victorian Ongoing Initiative for Community Engagement (VOICE) aims to work with communities to understand their strengths, needs and challenges. We connect communities with public health and other technical experts.

VOICE is a Burnet-led partnership with the Centre for Multicultural Youth (CMY), Monash University Action Lab, the Islamic Museum of Australia, Your Community Health and the Australian Multicultural Foundation. It has been supported by funding from the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing.

Understanding needs and challenges

VOICE uses a combination of traditional and digital community engagement. We collaborate and partner with people in the community and working in the sector. We do this to make public health practice stronger for multicultural communities.

Our work includes:

  • talking with communities and service providers about current and upcoming public health needs
  • working together to solve problems during emergencies like floods, pandemics and fires
  • sharing best-practice information and methods
  • providing timely support, tools and advice based on evidence
  • developing a website (VOICEonline) designed with communities’ and service provider input.

Bringing services together

Community organisations told us that one of their greatest challenges is the disconnection between services. These challenges got worse during the pandemic. New public health strategies emerged quickly, but with limited funding. This made it harder to measure how effective these strategies were. VOICE was created to explore new ways of addressing public health challenges by: 

  • using community strengths 
  • sharing learnings 
  • growing impact 
  • amplifying unmet needs 
  • co-designing responses to new community problems. 

VOICE seeks a more sustainable and meaningful impact by supporting collaboration between communities, services providers and government.

Co-creating communications

We worked with Melbourne's Indian community to turn key messages from a community question time session into social media content that can be shared through their networks and promote vaccine awareness and uptake.

Multilingual posters explaining all COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective.

Multilingual social media posters used to promote COVID-19 vaccines.

Community question time with Melbourne's Indian community

This video is an example of engaging a community through a community-led public health communications process. This process was developed by Burnet Institute and Today Design in partnership with Victoria's multicultural communities. It involves connecting communities directly to public health experts. This enables questions and concerns to be addressed in a person-centred, culturally sensitive and supportive environment.

We call this session 'Community question time'. In October 2021, Burnet Institute, Indian Care and Today Design partnered to co-create a series of key messages and social communications with members from north-west Melbourne's Indian Community.

We worked together to prioritise a list of key information needs. We then discussed who would be the trusted sources of information to help the community answer questions they were hearing in their social networks.

From this list, we recruited a panel to answer questions from the community. Answers were informed by public health and behavioural science to ensure community feedback was relevant and culturally appropriate.

Mental health advice for the Muslim community in Darebin

In these videos, 4 different professionals share advice on mental health. The videos are aimed at young people and their families in the Darebin Muslim community.

We created these videos in partnership with The Australian Multicultural Foundation, Your Community Health and The Islamic Museum of Australia.

Social worker Durre Shahwar gives parents tips on how to help their kids with their mental health and well-being.

Imam Sheikh Abdinur Weli talks about mental health and wellbeing from a religious point of view.

School counsellor Omer Yucel gives young people advice on the best ways to take care of their mental health and well-being.

Psychologist Ghada El-Zohbi explains how to get professional clinical support for mental health issues.

Pasifika young people

This is a short video about young people from the Pasifika community in Melbourne facing problems at schools. This video was co-created with Pasifika young people. It shows their struggles when teachers don't understand young people have other responsibilities outside of school.

The video came from 2 workshops led by Monash ActionLab with young Pasifika people in Melbourne's south-east. 

During the first workshop:

  • young people talked about using media, like videos, to talk about their community's issues
  • they decided on the theme of the video.

A young person from the Centre of Multicultural Youth then created the video. Later, in the second workshop:

  • young people provided feedback
  • ActionLab provided feedback. 

The young person creating the video then improved it to its final version.

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Benefits to the community

VOICE offers multicultural communities a platform to be heard and listened to. It helps service providers understand and adapt to the needs of multicultural communities. Through workshops, surveys and initiatives like VOICE online, VOICE has strengthened relationships between communities, service providers, public health practitioners, policy makers and government.

Guides

Reports

Partners

Funding partners

Department of Families, Fairness and Housing

Collaborators

  • Centre for Multicultural Youth
  • Monash University Action Lab
  • Islamic Museum of Australia
  • Your Community Health
  • Australian Multicultural Foundation

Project contacts

Main contact

Amy Kirwan

Amy Kirwan

Senior Research Fellow, Social Impact and Innovation
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Project team

Amy Kirwan

Amy Kirwan

Senior Research Fellow, Social Impact and Innovation
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Ana Orozco

Ana Orozco

Research Assistant
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Dr Caitlin Douglass

Dr Caitlin Douglass

Senior Research Officer
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Professor Caroline Homer AO

Professor Caroline Homer AO

Deputy Director – Gender Equity, Diversity & Inclusion; Co-Head, Global Women's and Newborn Health; Co-Head, Immunisation and Health Systems Strengthening
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Associate Professor Megan SC Lim

Associate Professor Megan SC Lim

Deputy Program Director, Disease Elimination; Head, Young People’s Health
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Professor Margaret Hellard AM

Professor Margaret Hellard AM

Deputy Director, Programs; Adjunct Professor, Monash University, DEPM.
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Professor Mark A  Stoové

Professor Mark A Stoové

Head of Public Health
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Associate Professor Alisa Pedrana

Associate Professor Alisa Pedrana

Senior Research Fellow; Deputy Discipline Head, Public Health; Eliminate Hepatitis C Australia Coordinator
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