Priority population engagement

The NSW Cervical Screening Program implements a range of activities within specific priority populations in order to increase cervical screening rates; notably Aboriginal, Chinese, Arabic and Vietnamese communities.

Aboriginal Community Engagement Strategy

A joint Breast and Cervical Screening Aboriginal Community Engagement strategy was implemented in 2014/15. The strategy was developed in consultation with an expert Advisory Group, including government and non-government organisations, involved in Aboriginal health.

Two community champions were engaged to promote the benefits of cervical screening by sharing their personal stories. These were developed into case studies and promoted via Indigenous media, social media and community events. The case studies are supported by printed resources developed in consultation with Aboriginal women.

Over 55,000 printed breast and cervical screening resources were distributed throughout NSW. The strategy achieved high levels of engagement with more than 160 community members and health care providers attending 6 community events across NSW. Qualitative feedback confirmed the community events increased awareness of the benefits of breast and cervical screening, encouraged open discussion about cancer and increased the intention to screen among participants.

Engagement Strategy for Arabic and Chinese Communities

In March 2015, a community engagement strategy targeting Arabic and Chinese women was implemented in the form of a social media campaign (#notjustnailpolish) to promote the importance of, and negate some of the sensitivities associated with, cervical screening.

Women were encouraged to participate in the campaign by painting their nails purple and posting their photos on social media. One Chinese and one Arabic social media influencer supported the campaign and media partnerships were established with Chinese and Arabic-speaking magazines to enable the publishing of translated articles. Two bilingual Health Care Professionals were also engaged as ambassadors.

Some of the key achievements of the campaign included: 118 discreet digital media posts, including social media and online articles; 407 women painted their nails and posed for photos which were uploaded to social media; and 684 in-language and English flyers were distributed.

This Screening Engagement Strategy (which also included a breast screening component) was selected as a finalist in the 2015 Australian Multicultural Marketing Awards.

Peace of Mind Campaign (multilingual component)

As a component of the 2013 “Peace of Mind” campaign, culturally appropriate campaign materials for press and radio were developed to specifically target women from Arabic, Chinese and Vietnamese speaking communities.

Evaluation of the campaign as a whole, demonstrated an increase in the weekly number of Pap tests within Local Government Areas with a high proportion of non-English speaking populations, although this effect was not as pronounced as for the overall population.

Your Guide to Cervical Screening videos

A series of three videos, entitled “Your Guide to Cervical Screening” was developed in 2014. The videos, which are spoken  in Arabic, Mandarin and English take the viewer through a woman’s cancer screening journey and use a humorous matriarchal figure to motivate women to have a Pap test. 

 

 

The videos have been developed for a number of uses including social media, websites and distribution to health professionals and women in the community setting, and are available on the NSW Cervical Screening Program website. DVDs are also available by contacting the NSW Cervical Screening Program directly, in order to support health and community workers to conduct face to face education sessions with women from the target communities.

These videos were awarded a 2015 Multicultural Health Communication Award (Best Audio Visual—Government).