Women’s Health
Female adolescents and women from refugee-like backgrounds may have had limited access to women’s healthcare services prior to arrival in Australia, either due to lack of availability in their countries of origin and transit or because of prolonged periods spent in transit camps. Depending on their country of origin and culture, the concept of women’s health screening and perinatal and postnatal care may be unfamiliar, and the rationale, benefits and processes thus may need to be explained with a professional interpreter to enable informed consent.
For more information about approaches to care for women’s health from a refugee background please see the Refugee Health Guide.
Referral
Family & Reproductive Rights Education Program
FARREP provides services for women from places where female circumcision is practised. The intent of the service is to make it easier for women to get appropriate health information and care.
Women can refer themselves to the FARREP program. FARREP services are usually available immediately and women can usually be seen on day of referral.
Referral
Maternal and Child Health Service
Victorian Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Services work in partnership with families to care for babies and young children until they start school.
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Referral
Royal Women’s Hospital and Monash Health
Asylum seekers and refugees are entitled to subsidised medical care except for a small co-payment for outpatient medications and medications on discharge. Patients will need to provide supporting documentation confirming migration status from the government or from a recognised asylum support agency such as Red Cross or IHMS before their first appointment. If the documentation is not produced, patients will be billed, however, the fees will be waived if the documents are shown to the hospital at a later date.
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Migrant and Refugee Health partnership
Migrant and Refugee Health partnership: Useful resources and publications on migrant and refugee women’s health.
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Family Planning Victoria
Here you will find a list of factsheets and video animations translated into languages other than English. These resources were produced in partnership with the Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health.
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Multicultural Health and Support Service
Multicultural Health and Support Service: Goal is to prevent new incidences and transmission of blood borne viruses and sexually transmitted infections in refugee, asylum seeker and migrant communities. Also available on their website is the Health Translations hub with multilingual resources.
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2021 Sexual and Reproductive Health Data Report
Paper: 2021 Sexual and Reproductive Health Data Report and ‘Act Now’.
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Jean Hailes for Women’s Health
Resources designed to help health professionals deliver health information to women and girls across Australia. Our resources (including multilingual resources) are intended for a broad, general audience with varying levels of health literacy, and their development is guided by plain language and health literacy principles, making them practical and easy to understand and use.
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Sexual Health Victoria
Sexual Health Victoria provides Multilingual Sexual Health Resources with a list of factsheets and video animations translated into languages other than English.
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Shifra
Shifra has been co-designed with refugee and migrant communities and organisations to help users access culturally-sensitive sexual and reproductive health information in local languages.
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Healthy Horizons
Healthy Horizons has been developed in consultation with women from migrant and refugee backgrounds. It covers the issues that matter to you, at any stage of your life. Your health and wellbeing is important: learn more and seek help when you need it.
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Harmony Alliance
Harmony Alliance works to enable an effective voice for migrant and refugee women in domestic and international policy.
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Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health (MCWH)
Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health (MCWH) is a community-based, not-for-profit organisation led by, for and with women from migrant and refugee backgrounds. We increase migrant and refugee women’s opportunities for health and wellbeing in Australia through bilingual health education, advocacy and leadership.
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Resource
Breast Screen Victoria
Our introduction to breast screening, called ‘Put your health first’, can be read online and downloaded in a range of languages. There are also a number of other translated resources that you can download and print.
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Publication
Respectful Dialogue: A Guide for Responsible Reporting on Female Genital Cutting
Developed by the Australian Muslim Women’s Centre for Human Rights, this resource guide is for professionals working in all aspects of the media on the issue of Female Genital Cutting.
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Publication
Contraception knowledge and attitudes
A paper on the findings of a qualitative study of the contraception knowledge, attitudes and beliefs of African Australian teenagers and women from a refugee background in Melbourne.
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Publication
How do Australian maternity and early childhood health services identify and respond to the settlement experiences and social context of refugee background families?
The social circumstances of parents are critical to their experience of having a baby and refugee background families may encounter particular challenges. The study Having a Baby in a New Country was conducted in order to develop a better understanding of the issues facing refugee background families, focusing on Afghan women and men and health professionals in Melbourne’s southeast.
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Publication
Perinatal mental health of women from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds: A guide for primary care health professionals
Women from CALD backgrounds are particularly vulnerable to developing emotional distress or mental health disorders in the perinatal period and they often do not receive the care they need.
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Publication
The Development of a sustainable nutrition education session promoting healthy eating amongst Afghan refugee women within Mildura
The report from this project details the needs assessment, literature review, focus groups, pilot program and resources that were undertaken and developed to respond to high rates of type 2 diabetes in adults and dental decay in children from Afghan community in Mildura.
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Publication
Working together to improve health literacy in refugee women
Between June 2016 and June 2017, Health Issues Centre and the Victorian Refugee Health Network received funding from the Victorian Women’s Benevolent Trust and Australian Communities Foundation to undertake the second of a three stage project on the accessibility of health information by refugee communities in Victoria.
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Publication
Gender Equity Victoria : Breaking the Barriers : Migrant and Refugee women’s experiences of health care in Victoria
WOMHEn multicultural health educator workforce, persistent in their efforts, continued Phase II of WOMHEn Project by delivering health education sessions to migrant and refugee women in 18 different community languages to address barriers to vaccine literacy and uptake, vaccine hesitancy, and service navigation of migrant and refugee women, including those who are carers, of childbearing age or pregnant, and living in rural and regional Victoria. The project culminated in providing access of health education sessions to 3287 migrant and refugee women of whom 1,631 of participants reported that they had increased their awareness of the health benefits of accessing COVID-19 vaccines after attending the session.
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Publication
Murdoch Children’s Research Institute — Bridging the Gap: Partnerships for change in refugee child and family health
A partnership program that brings together health service clinicians and managers, policy makers and researchers to bring about sustainable improvements in the quality of maternity and early childhood health care to improve health and health care outcomes for families of refugee background.
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Publication
Engaging Professional Interpreters During Labour (2016)
A policy and practice brief reporting on the learnings and achievements of the Bridging the Gap initiative Language in labour.
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Publication
Settling better: reforming refugee employment and settlement services
There is overwhelming evidence about the importance of health and employment in successful settlement. This report identifies five principal barriers to newly arrived refugees finding jobs: limited English, a lack of work experience, poor health, a lack of opportunities for women, and having only been in Australia for a short amount of time.
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