Qec-Eran

Download Workshop report: part1 (workshop report), part 2 (case studies)

Case study: Community Health Information Workers
Programme on how to expand and develop Community Health Information Workers in neighbourhoods across Belfast, in order to promote health and well-being.

Case study: BADANTI in Italy
The phenomenon of "Badanti" in Italy is linked to people care which involves domestic work/assistance/help, family care, children care, disabled care, elderly people care. Within the private sector, care to elderly people is provided by profit making or not-for-profit organisations, by individuals/badanti and in a formal or informal way. Badanti are live-in minders, elderly people care providers, normally immigrants and immigrant women and they work long hours and live in cohabitation with the employer.

Case study: Gynoquid - Cancer awareness raising project, CPAS, Charleroi, Belgium
This project aimed to raise awareness of cancer particularly amongst women and aimed reduce 25 % of the mortality rate due to cancer related illness.

Case study: Improving the health of Asian women living in designated priority area of Coventry
The project addressed the problem of poor sexual health of women in Foleshill and adjoining areas and in particular, low uptake of cervical cancer screening within a doctor's practice in the Foleshill area: Asian women did not understand issues related to cervical screening and were not aware of the services being offered.

Case study: Ballybeen Women's Centre
Ballybeen Women's Centre is an integrated service provider committed to enabling women, young people and children to realise their potential and fulfill their aspirations through personal and socio-economic development and health promotion. The Women's Centre encourages the promotion of good health throughout all of its services and provides a range of preventative health programmes for women and young people

Case study: single parent and stress - Czech Republic
The project aims to help single mothers to overcome stress stemming from a divorce (or widowhood) so that it has a minimal possible impact on the mental health of women and their children. It also trains lay collaborators to support single mothers further, and to develop a network for single mothers as well as to establish a network of Single Mothers Clubs in some regions of the Czech Republic

Case study: Health nutrition for pregnant women (Czech and Roma women)
Based on priorities from the "Nutrition Action Plan" (WHO), the Project comprises individual and group nutritional educational and consulting activities for a group of 650 pregnant Czech and Romany women including the pre-/post intervention survey of nutritional habits, and individual recommendations for higher consumption of fruit, vegetable, low-fat milk products etc.

Case study: Primary Prevention Program of Neural Tube Defects - Poland
The Primary Prevention Program of Neural Tube Defects tries to reduce neural tube defects prevalence in Poland by increasing folic acid intake during the pre-conceptional period by women during the childbearing age. The intervention is targeting the total population, taking into account the social gradient of health and disease. In particular this programme focuses on women from low SES and with a low education level.

Case study: Bettering women's health, education and lifestyle project (BeWEHL)
BeWEHL works exclusively in areas where there are low levels of economic activity, low skills, high unemployment and a high benefits dependency. It has developed an innovative and inclusive model which reaches the most hard to reach and excluded learners. The project successfully works to improve the well being, confidence, lifestyle and life chances of its participants.

Case study: Health Education in Women's Penitentiary, Zuera - Spain
This project undertook health promotion among the prison population in Zuera, Spain. Inmates mainly belong to socially excluded groups, which is the cause of limited health education in general and more importantly in those diseases associated with poor behaviour patterns. Marginalization keeps them out of the usual services that public health bring to the rest of the population' s reach regarding the prevention of these diseases, and make them more vulnerable to them.

Case Study: Charleroi (BE) - Intercultural Mediation Charleroi
The Intercultural Mediation service offers training and supervises the work of intercultural mediators in a multicultural environment. It has a very important role in the health care, in hospitals and GPs. Mediation started in Belgium as early as in 1974, however it was only from 1997 that the function of cultural mediators are recognised in hospital environment.

Case Stud: Dortmund (DE)
The city of Dortmund has realised that use of services among elderly ethnic minority was very low, therefore the city government wanted to develop strategies to improve services for this client group. Different cultural, and religious background, expected or real discrimination hampered the use of social services among ethnic minority elderly. It is important to note that despite the good will of the municipality to open up typical German day-care centres for ethnic minority groups, the initiative has failed. Therefore they have chosen to fund a special and separate day care centre satisfying the needs of BME elderly. The case study is important since it shows that also within BME groups special attention to elderly and other vulnerable groups should be given and also that sometimes it is more appropriate to offer separate services.

Case Study: Moordrecht (NL)
The Dutch practice from the city of Moordrecht shows that mainstream services are sometimes not available to ethnic minority groups due to cultural barriers. The Moluccan community is renowned by the strong family ties. This strong extraverted attitude discouraged them from the use of Home Care services. Besides it put too much burden on family carers, who took the job of caring for the elderly as an obligation, and did not revolt against it. The practitioners recognised this problem and working together with the Moluccan community detected the main cultural problems what prevented Moluccan elderly from the use of the public services. The case study shows that sometimes, ethnic minority groups are reluctant to use available public services due to cultural barriers.

Case Study: Manchester (UK)
One of the major problems recognized by the Teenage Pregnancy Unit in the UK was that youth from ethnic minority background were much more exposed to adverse sexual health behaviour than youth from the majority population. Teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections were high among black young people in Manchester, while sexual health awareness was low in both cities. There have been many initiatives in sexual health educational projects aiming explicitly minority, mainly black young people throughout the country. The establishment of a long-term position for a community worker worked well while creativity and appealing working sessions were a must for success in the Manchester case presented below.

Case Study: London (UK)
The London example shows that more severe working sessions are viable as well, but in that case easily accessible outreach workers were employed to engage youngsters. Both cases (see Manchester case above) demonstrate that old-fashioned practices are not working with young generations. Messages accessible for them should use trendy paths, DJs, graffiti workshops and the like.

Case Studies: Romsas (NO) and Amsterdam (NL)
Sport is only one of a range of activities that can improve health, and the evidence for this broader context shows that participation in health-enhancing activities varies by gender and age among different ethnic communities, and that ethnic minority groups are less likely to take part in these activities than the population as a whole. There are two examples of promoting physical activities. The first example from Norway has a ground level, low visibility but broad coverage profile, on the other hand the other example from the Netherlands has a very high visibility and it is aiming at social cohesion organising the whole city of Amsterdam into a tournament of five different activities.

Case Study: Tilburg (NL)
Good nutrition plays a vital role in promoting and protecting health. It helps prevent heart disease and some cancers as well as other health problems, such as obesity and oral disease. As the evidence below shows personal health strategies are determined by the socio-economic status of a person, and thus the ethnicity plays a very important part in it. Health outcomes, such as life expectancy, and life in good health do change across different ethnic groups. Nutrition, especially for young generations plays an important part in it. As a recent study on childhood development demonstrated at the international conference on urban health “there are Negroid diseases, and Hindustani diseases”. This means that nutrition is very much ethnicity determined. The following example from the Netherlands shows how a community has chosen the problem of overweight as the most outreaching health problem in a deprived neighbourhood, and how it became so successful in accessing the really hard to reach inhabitants of the area. It is important to note that overweight was an overall problem in the district and thus a complex community approach was targeting obesity. It included many distinct subgroups and many different types of intervention.

Case Studies: Den Hague (NL)
Many ethnic minority young people, and especially immigrants have special psychosocial needs and require preventive measures. Their special needs come from being at the borderline between two cultures and they feel that they have to fit into two differing set of requirements. Both of the examples illuminate a very important stress source of immigrants. Many immigrants find themselves in-between cultures and societies and are distressed with identity problems. The mental health of immigrants is a serious problem that has been taken seriously in the Netherlands. The complex programme not only aimed at young immigrants helping to build up their identity, but also to practitioners for better detecting and developing special therapies for this client group. Asylum seekers in the latter case show that building up self-confidence is one of the most important issues for their mental health. The project also proved that the employment drive is very much linked to mental health and that mental health and employment despair often goes hand in hand for immigrants.

Case Study: Hospice care - (NL)
Hospice care is in the core of our human beings, and it might be very difficult to behave "properly" to your mourning neighbour or client. This was the basic experience behind the initiative from the Netherlands to provide information and support to all about multicultural understanding relating to death.

Case Study: Child Friendly Cities - Italy
The "Child Friendly Cities" initiative in Italy has been very active in transforming the attitudes of host country residents towards immigrants. The main approach was to make residents realise that diversity is a value in itself and many cross cultural activities has been performed which on the one hand informed host Italian families, while giving opportunities to immigrant families to better integrate into society. There is an ample spectrum of such initiatives from markets, common language clubs, solidarity programmes and religious educational groups. The openness of the host community was a key aspect in settling down for the immigrant families in many cases, and children were the best instruments to lessen discrimination.

Case Study: Ethnic Communities and Green Spaces - (UK)
The introduction of the guidance book for green space managers produced by the Black Environment Network exemplifies the importance of ethnicity conscious physical environmental design in the urban context. It also highlights the importance of urban design in creating healthy living conditions for everyone in our cities. "The role of high quality green spaces has won a significant place on the sustainable development agenda. It is now recognised that access to the use and enjoyment of green spaces, participation in its maintenance and improvement, and the creation of new spaces tailored to the needs of a range of social groups deliver a better quality of life. With the realisation that working for sustainable development means including everyone, involving ethnic communities is one of the key challenges.

Case Study: Practical guide for managing the medical, psychological and social care of at-risk migrants (France)
Immigrants, asylum seekers, ethnic minorities not only suffer from worst off health care, more mental health problems, but their overall access to other services is also limited. Therefore the most successful initiatives promoting the health of ethnic minority groups fostered health promotion in a broader context. This complex attitude can be found in the French good example in this report. Complex health services were promoted through a French practitioners' guide in order to enable professionals working with migrants to have a broader understanding of their legal rights, health care access. It also gives a detailed list of facilities and resources available for migrants.

Case Study: Research on Roma support programmes - Budapest (HU)
The research commissioned by Studio Metropolitana Urban Research Centre of Budapest was presented at the URB-Health conference . It was conducted by independent researchers and highlighted the importance of complex approaching. The different national executive branches started many national initiatives for the benefit of roma population, and non-governmental organisations eager to receive state funding are very responsive to actual financing opportunities.

Case study: Wirral Change Project, (UK)
Wirral Change is a Black and Racial Minority Employment Outreach Project which was launched in September 2005. It is managed by Liverpool Network for Change and run by Wirral Change, together with the Wirral local strategic partnership and support from Wirral Neighbourhood Renewal Fund.

Case study: Arnhem (NL)
Improvement of the health and welfare of people with a lower economic status by means of an integrated approach to the neighbourhood, where the residents and key people themselves indicate their priorities for health and welfare.

Download workshop report: part 1, part 2 (case studies)

Case study: North and West Belfast Health Action Zone
North and West Belfast is an area characterised by disadvantage. There are high levels of poverty, health status is poor, and a wide range of social and health related problems are prevalent. The North and West Belfast Health Action Zone was established to address the key issue of health inequalities together with the crucial task of finding ways to enable statutory, community and voluntary organisations to work together in a more co-ordinated way.

Case study: Top of the Rock Healthy Living Centre - HLC
The Healthy Living Centre was initially supported by the Big Lottery and a range of other funders to provide services within the Upper Springfield and Whiterock electoral wards of Belfast. The programme has actively provided support and activity to the following interest groups: Suicide Awareness Support Group, Travelling Community, Disability groups, Men, Women, Young People, and schools both primary and post primary.

Case study: FIDIA
A social enterprise with the participation of disabled to facilitate access to health information for disabled
The project FIDIA (Formazione di Impresa rivolta a persone Disabili sul tema dell'Accessibilità del Web) was born with the aim to create entrepreneurial activities involving disabled people to facilitate web accessibility, to provide consultancy to public or private organisations and to create web sites without “virtual barriers".

Case Studies: Childhood Lead Poisoning: Cases of poisoning within a gypsy community
Steel framework is one of the traditional activities for the Gypsies. This activity is made without any precaution exposing adults and children to the risk of lead intoxication. The Service Communal d'Hygiène et de Santé (Health and Hygiene Community Department) in Toulouse has undertaken a programme to implement prevention actions to reduce, or even to remove the sources of exposure, to establish follow up for lead poisoning and to create a climate of confidence favourable to establish prevention with the participation of the association CCPS which has won the community's trust.

Case study: Insights into Children's Physical Activity and Fitness in Liverpool
In 1997 a partnership between Liverpool John Moores University and Sports Development in the local authority was developed to address the issue of the rapid increase of overweight in the child aged population and the low level of activity of fitness in this age group.

Case study: Transforming tastes to combat Children Health Deseases: the Greater Merseyside low fat dairy campaign
Children's saturated fat intakes in the UK far exceed the maximum recommended levels for health; current intakes are 14% of energy, compared to the ideal level for health of less than 10% of energy intake. Milk and milk products are the biggest single source of saturated fat in children's diets - accounting for 27% of intakes among 5-10 year olds. This campaign aimed to promote low fat dairy products to parents and children aged 5 to 11 in Greater Merseyside, as a simple way of reducing saturated fat intakes.

MARIA AND CONSTANTIN
clinic animation for children with long hospitalisation period
This project looks at the need for support and activities for children hospitalized for a long period of time (1-6 months) and also for teenagers in order to facilitate their self-discovery and social involvement.

Case study of Portugal: "Intake, mobility and transport. School improves the environment"
On the World Health Day, 7th April 2004, the Ministries of Health and Environment launched a challenge to Portuguese schools, with the subject: "School improves the environment". This project sought to identify existing environmental risks in schools and surroundings.

Case study Slovakia
The health status of the population of Slovakia is inadequate when compared to that of developed Western European countries. The aim of the project is to look at key issues concerning health education in kindergartens and to educate teachers, children, parents about the main causes of chronic diseases and how to improve health.

Case study Czech Republic "Smoking and me"
In the Czech Republic smoking is being taken up at a younger age. Certain regulatory measures have been incorporated as fragmentary legislation such as bans on selling of tobacco to children under age 18, on smoking at the workplace, on smoking in public places, and restrictions on advertising. Smoking among children over 15 is, however, tolerated to such an extent that a large number of high schools have established smoking rooms to be used by their young smokers. Within the existing educational structure, an antismoking education programme has been implemented, based on a totally new principle of health education and using an active group work approach.

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