Resources & Referrals > Tools for Health Professionals > Resources and Support for Health Professionals
Resources and support for Health Professionals
Many people from refugee backgrounds, including people seeking asylum, have higher rates of long-term physical and psychological problems than other migrants, due in large part to their pre-immigration experiences, which are compounded by post-migration factors. People from refugee backgrounds can experience barriers when accessing primary care and other services. These may be related to trauma symptoms associated with the refugee experience, language, culture, health system literacy, lack of appropriate services, socioeconomic disadvantage as well as policies that restrict eligibility to health and other services.
Accessible primary care is ideally suited to providing an incremental, patient-directed approach to long-term care and recovery for refugee patients in Australia. Developing continuity of care for patients from refugee backgrounds can be promoted by a whole-of-practice approach with attention to trauma-informed care.
For information about approaches to care for people from a refugee background please see the Refugee Health Guide.
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Manaya Pride Program
Category: LGBTIQ+
Provides free mental health and psychosocial support services to LGBTIQAPSB+ Forcibly Displaced people.Visit
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Perinatal Anxiety & Depression Australia (PANDA) – National Helpline
Category: Maternal Health
FIND SOMEONE TO TALK TO, MONDAY TO SATURDAY. 1300 726 306Visit
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Perinatal Emotional Health Service
Category: Maternal Health
PET is a small, multidisciplinary team of professionals offering a specialised mental health service to support women with emotional health difficulties in the perinatal period (antenatal to 12 months postnatal).Visit
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Specialised and Intensive Services (SIS)
Specialised and Intensive Services (SIS) is a component of the Humanitarian Settlement Program (HSP) available to humanitarian entrants and other eligible visa holders who have complex needs. SIS offer clients short term needs-based support to help them access appropriate mainstream services and develop the necessary skills to manage their needs independently.Visit
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Refugee Health Fellows Program
The Department of Health in Victoria has funded Refugee Health fellow positions to provide support and advice to health professionals. Fellows are available by telephone and can often arrange to see you in your practice. Fellows can offer assistance with diagnosis and management, and can provide information on referral pathways for refugee and asylum seeker clients.Find out more
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Refugee Health Program
Speak with your local Refugee Health Program about how they can support you. Refugee health nurses and allied health staff are located in community health centres in areas of high refugee settlement. Refugee health nurses can provide advice on primary and specialist referral, as well as referral to relevant community groups and community services.Visit
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Medical Practitioner Priority Line for free Interpreting services
Private medical practitioners and their practice staff can access free Interpreting Services to provide Medicare rebatable services to anyone in Australia who is eligible for Medicare. This service is available 24 hours a day, every day of the year.Find out more
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Perinatal Anxiety & Depression Australia (PANDA) – Support in different languages
Category: Maternal Health
Get the support you need with resources translated into 40 languages.Visit
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Designing mental health services for young people from refugee and migrant backgrounds
Category: Mental Health and Wellbeing
A tip sheet for mental health clinicians, counsellors and key workers working with children, young people and families from a refugee or asylum seeking background.Visit
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Working with Children, Young People and Families from a Refugee and Asylum-seeking Background: A Tip Sheet
Category: Child Youth Health, Mental Health and Wellbeing
A tip sheet for mental health clinicians, counsellors and key workers working with children, young people and families from a refugee or asylum seeking background.View Document
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Helpful information for GPs seeing a patient from refugee background
This resource was developed by the Refugee Health Network QueenslandFind out more
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National Immunisation Program eligibility for refugees and humanitarian entrants
The Commonwealth guidance states that NIP vaccines are free for ‘refugees and humanitarian entrants of any age’.Find out more
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PHN Multicultural Framework
The PHN Multicultural Framework provides high-level guidance and best practice actions to support PHNs to deliver locally informed and relevant responses in partnership with other stakeholders.View document
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Catch up vaccinations
Category: Immunisations
The Immunisation Unit at the Department of Health has created a new webpage to support immunisers through the vaccination catch-up journey with their patients.Visit
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Interpreting Services for PHN-Commissioned mental health services
Category: Mental Health and Wellbeing
As a provider of mental health services funded by a Primary Health Network, your organisation is now able to access interpreting Services funded by the Australian Government through the National Translating and Interpreting Services (TIS National).View Document
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Healthcare for people from refugee backgrounds and people seeking asylum- RACGP
The RACGP recognises the complexity of health care needs of people from refugee backgrounds. General practitioners have a key role to play in supporting this group, but they need to be supported through access to interpreters, appropriate education and training, evidence-based research, a coordinated approach between health services, and guided by a national strategy.Visit
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Working with patients from refugee background: GP Administration Tips
A brief guideline on GP Administration tips when working with patients from refugee backgrounds.View Document
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Working effectively with interpreters to support families from refugee backgrounds
A brief guideline on how to work effectively with interpreters to support families from refugee backgrounds.View Document
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The Australian Refugee Health Practice Guide
The Australian Refugee Health Practice Guide can be used by doctors, nurses and other primary care providers to inform on-arrival and ongoing health care for people from refugee backgrounds, including people seeking asylum.Visit
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Migrant & Refugee Health Partnership Resources
Overview of cultural competence in professional education, training and standard setting for clinicians. Good practice approaches in facilitating primary health care delivery to migrants and refugees: The role of primary health networks.Visit
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Ask Izzy
This resource provides links to many additional services including food, housing, material aid, health providers, counselling etc.Visit
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HealthPathways Melbourne
HealthPathways offers clinicians locally agreed information to make the right decisions together with patients, at the point of care. The pathways are designed primarily for general practice teams, but are also available to specialists, allied health professionals, and other health professionals in your region.Visit
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NSW Refugee Health Service
The NSW Refugee Health Service (RHS) is a state-wide service, funded by the Ministry of Health. It provides a range of clinical services and medical assessments for recently arrived refugees and asylum seekers. Activities also include policy input, research, projects and a range of health promotion initiatives.Visit
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Appointment Translation
The NSW Multicultural Health Communication Service's online Appointment Reminder Translation Tool allows you to translate appointment details into your client's language.Visit
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Multilingual printable appointment card
The multilingual appointment card has been developed by Cancer Council Victoria to help culturally and linguistically diverse Australians more easily access healthcare appointments.Visit
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TIS National promotional materials catalogue
The Translating and Interpreting service (TIS National) provides a range of promotional materials to assist you and your clients to access our services. TIS National provides a range of promotional products in electronic format for you to view, print or save immediately.Visit
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Health Translations
Health Translations is a free online library of high-quality translated Australian health and wellbeing information. Made for Australian health practitioners and people who work with culturally and linguistically diverse communities, the site provides quick access to a wealth of reliable resources.Visit
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Easidose
Easidose is a prescribing aid addressing language and literacy barriers. Easidose uses colour coding for medications, and picture based instructions for dose, frequency, duration and special conditions.Visit
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General Practice Engagement Project
In late 2014, the Network began work on a dedicated project to engage and support more general practices in Victoria to work with people from refugee backgrounds. This project builds on the work of many others in the sector, including Refugee Health Nurses, Refugee Health Fellows and the former Medicare Locals, who have done substantial capacity building with general practice to ensure accessible and appropriate health care in general practice for people from refugee backgrounds.View Document
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Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) Item
Refugee Health Assessment under MBS Items 701, 703, 705 and 707. This health assessment is for refugees and other humanitarian entrants who arrive in Australia with complex and unusual medical conditions resulting from their area of origin or previous living conditions. This assessment is separate from, and in addition to, a medical assessment specifically for the grant of a Refugee or Humanitarian visa.Visit
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STAR-MH
The STAR-MH (Screening Tool for Asylum-seeker and Refugee Mental Health) is a simple mental health screening tool developed for non-mental health trained workers to identify likely post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depressive disorder in their asylum-seeking and new refugee clients.Visit
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Is your practice refugee health ready?
This guide provides a quick-reference guide to General Practices considering or currently providing health care services to people from a refugee background. It is not an exhaustive list but aims to serve as a tool to support health care for this population group and the development of appropriate primary care services.Visit
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Competency Standards Framework for Clinicians
The Competency Standards Framework (the Framework) establishes recommended and optimal cultural responsiveness competency standards for clinicians in all healthcare settings. The Framework is aimed exclusively at clinicians and inform the development of clinical education, training, professional development curricula and competency standards for clinicians.Visit
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Refugee Health Assessment
The Refugee Health Assessment Template 2018 (the Template) considers the primary care context including workflow and whole of practice approaches and will assist primary care providers to deliver high quality on arrival health care for people from refugee backgrounds.View Document
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2022 RACGP curriculum and syllabus for Australian general practice
The curriculum and syllabus describe the key competency and learning outcomes of GP education. It informs the development and delivery of training programs including CPD and guides learners by suggesting learning modalities and educational resources as they work towards Fellowship. It also serves as a guide to assist with remediation and GPs returning to work after absence.Visit
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Comprehensive post-arrival health assessment
Recommendations for comprehensive post-arrival health assessment for people from refugee-like backgrounds. On behalf of the Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases and Refugee Health Network of Australia.View Document
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Cultural safety and belonging for refugee background women attending group pregnancy care: An Australian qualitative study
Category: Maternal Health
Refugee women experience higher incidence of childbirth complications and poor pregnancy outcomes. Resettled refugee women often face multiple barriers accessing pregnancy care and navigating health systems in high income countries. A community-based model of group pregnancy care for Karen women from Burma was co-designed by health services in consultation with Karen families in Melbourne, Australia.View Document
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Finding our own ways of working together: reflections on implementing and facilitating a multidisciplinary and equity-orientated model of Group Pregnancy Care for women of refugee background.
Category: Maternal Health
This paper explores professional staff experiences of implementing and facilitating a multidisciplinary equity-oriented model of Group Pregnancy Care for women of refugee background. This model was the first of its kind in Australia and one of the first worldwide.View Document
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Trauma-Informed Care and Equity in Group Pregnancy Care for Women in Refugee Background: Reflections from the workforce.
Category: Maternal Health
For women and families of refugee background having a baby in Australia, trauma-related experiences contribute to maternal and neonatal health inequities. Group Pregnancy Care for women of refugee background is a new model of care that was codesigned with communities of refugee background, to incorporate a trauma-informed approach to care. The aim of this paper is to explore how trauma-informed care is understood by Group Pregnancy Care professional staff.View Document
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Lost in translation: using standardised self-report measures in cross-cultural research
The goal of this resource is to provide guidance regarding the use of standardised self-report measures in research involving people of refugee and migrant backgrounds.View Document
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Immunisation Fact Sheet: For case workers working with refugees and asylum seekers
Category: Immunisations
This information sheet is to inform case workers in Victoria about immunisation policy and considerations for people of refugee backgrounds.View Document
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The Social Determinants of mental health and disorder: evidence, prevention and recommendations
Category: Mental Health and Wellbeing
In this paper we provide a roadmap to address the social determinants that cause mental ill health. Relying as far as possible on high-quality evidence, we first map out the literature that supports a causal link between social determinants and later mental health outcomes.View Document
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Chronic health conditions among culturally and linguistically diverse Australians, 2021
People from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds are identified as a priority population in a number of key Australian Government health strategies. This web report is part of a program of work on the health status of CALD people in Australia and presents data on the prevalence of chronic conditions reported by CALD Australians in the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ 2021 Census of Population and Housing.Visit