Education, health and community sector service providers came together on May 1, for the CALD Women's Sexual and Reproductive Health Forum, which presented the results of extensive research examining how sexual and reproductive health is experienced and understood by CALD women, from a range of recent migrant and refugee communities.
The Community Migrant Resource Centre (CMRC) was key to connecting researchers with the CALD communities, which included a total of 169 women from Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka (Tamil), India (Punjab) and Latin America.
The Research Report and Recommendations for Healthcare Providers and Community Workers explored how, if at all, women from migrant and refugee communities accessed sexual and reproductive health services, and their level of education on sexual and reproductive health more broadly.
Speaking to the forum, CMRC CEO Melissa Monteiro said, “Preventative sexual and reproductive health is something that is not well known among CALD women. Services are very under-utilised by their communities, and this means they lack the education to make positive and beneficial decisions.”
This research was funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant to the Centre for Health Research, School of Medicine, Western Sydney University, in conjunction with Family Planning New South Wales (FPNSW), The Community Migrant Resource Centre (CMRC) and Centre for the Study of Gender, Social Inequities and Mental Health, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada.
Read more about the forum here, including a link to the research report.