In May 2021, SIS started delivery of a Sussex Health and Care Partnership commissioned Bilingual Health Promotion Project. it is a Sussex wide project working to improve the health and wellbeing of people with language needs from diverse ethnic communities.
BHPP combines elements of community development, partnership working and volunteer management in delivery of health promotion, social prescribing and community engagement. SIS staff and linguists have had a fantastic 6 months delivering services which support and contribute to health equalities targets, engage and empower people to choose healthy behaviours and manage additional risk factors and help people with language needs to have a voice in public consultation and engagement opportunities.
Key output include
- Practical responses to issues and barriers raised by communities e.g.promoting the benefits of face to face interpreting
- Expanding our network of community contacts in East and West Sussex
- helped SHCP recruitment 8 new Ethnically Diverse Community Ambassadors
- Extensive health promotion of cancer screening information
- Delivery of light touch social prescribing through 183 interactions
- Comprehensive review and development of the SIS service user webpages in 19 languages
- Evaluated SHCPs pilot use of translated surveys to help improve accessiblity
The 6 month report can be read here
