ADMINSTRATORS MEDAL PRIMARY HEALTH CARE
ACCEPTANCE SPEECH BY ALICE MITCHELL, HEALTH EDUCATOR
GOVERNMENT HOUSE 30 APRIL, 2010
On behalf of the ards health team, I would like to thank His Honour, Mr Tom Pauling, for the Medal in Primary Health Care, and the recognition of our work. Out team consists of many skilled and committed people: a linguist, qualified Yolngu translators, a range of health professionals, media professionals, educators and others.
The aim of our work in Primary Health Care is to assist Yolngu, the people of NE Arnhem, to make sense of, and grasp meaning, and understanding of the many health issues that face them, and we all know the picture that health statistics paint for us today.
However, in our relating and working closely with Yolngu colleagues, we see a somewhat different side of this picture. We see a group of people who for the main simply do not haveaccess to health information. To have in-depth health information, is to be equipped to make informed decisions about your own health.
People often don’t realise that health information is not accessible. It is not intentionally locked up, but it becomes so because it is delivered in the functional language in our health system; which of course is English.
However, for Yolngu, as with many other indigenous groups, English is a second language and not the language that they think in. Also, our language encodes our world view, which in health, is the biomedical view. Yolngu do not have this biomedical worldview in their history, they have other knowledge, equally valid.
The unique thing about the work of our health team is that we develop our health information using language and world view of the Yolngu, together with them. Then we deliver it in the people’s language- in face-to-face sessions, in the community clinic, via DVD and via the community radio service.
We are a small team in a tiny organisation but we have discovered how to succeed in communicating around health. We hope that our discoveries can inform and be translated over into mainstream services, particularly health promotion. We hope that this award will help us to do that.
Thankyou
Alice Mitchell
ARDS Senior Health Educator
