Voice for Wellness
Pegasus Health is supporting the health and wellbeing of Canterbury's refugee and migrant communities through an initiative that will hit the airwaves soon.
Voice for Wellness, a six-part health-related series, is being recorded in five different languages, which will then be aired on local radio station Plains FM. Voice for Wellness will provide information and useful contacts to help people access health support in the community.
Wayne Reid and Simi Desor
The radio programme is the brainchild of Registered Psychologist Simi Desor, who works as a paediatric psychologist for the Canterbury District Health Board. As an Indian woman, who grew up in India and Canada and moved to New Zealand in 1997, Simi is passionate about supporting people from refugee and migrant backgrounds.
"Often, people from refugee and migrant backgrounds will arrive in New Zealand and think they're fine, that they're out of the worst. But in reality they're not in some ways. They may have physical safety, but there's post-traumatic stress or there's emotional fallout from having lost family and friends or having left them behind. So, a lot of that is part of what we're trying to address. We want people to know, if you're feeling any of these feelings, get in touch."
Voice for Wellness will cover six topics - social, emotional, physical, vocational, spiritual and intellectual. Since December, Simi has spent hours preparing the scripts, interviewing health practitioners and editing and transcribing the recordings.
Along with an English series, the programme will be broadcast in Mandarin, Nepali, Farsi, Arabic and Somali. Pegasus Health has provided funding support for the recording time and translation services.
Simi and Pegasus Health's Refugee and Migrant Health Manager, Wayne Reid, worked closely with the Christchurch Migrants Centre to identify the issues affecting the region's diverse migrant communities when deciding what topics to focus on.
Choosing the languages was based on the city's largest communities and smallest, most vulnerable communities, Wayne says.
Once aired, Voice for Wellness will be available as podcasts and on DVDs. The series will also be given to Health Information Providers from Christchurch Resettlement Services to take out into the community.
"Many people, particularly women from refugee backgrounds, cannot read or write in their own language and will never learn English, so the only way to communicate with them is through spoken language," Wayne says.
The DVDs will also play a part in the new collaboration between Pegasus Health and CPIT. Wayne became an official part of CPIT's nursing programme this year, providing cultural training to third-year students.