Rahma Health
Health information resources for Arabic speaking families
The Canberra Mothercraft Society is a proud partner of Rahma Health, which supports Arabic-speaking families in the first five years of a child’s life through the provision of world-class healthcare information. Rahma’s resources are written and reviewed by health professionals from the Arabic-speaking refugee and migrant community in Melbourne. Their large, multidisciplinary team consists of obstetricians, general practitioners, speech pathologists, dentists, midwives, and nurses. The Rahma team strives to ensure that the best information is available to families to facilitate culturally safe and person-centred support.
Rahma Health is currently undertaking a major project with the University of Melbourne and Murdoch Children’s Research lnstitute to evaluate and codify its current health and parenting resources both qualitatively and quantitatively, and assess potential expansion to other languages and other community groups including Dari, the Afghan dialect of Farsi (Persian), and/or lndonesian.
A research assistant is currently working on the data collection and evaluation part of the codification project. The research involves interviews with Arabic-speaking families to gain feedback on, and evidence of, the efficacy of the health and parenting advice provided by Rahma’s online resources and to inform how Rahma can expand into other languages. CMS has provided $10,000 in funding to contribute to the payment of the research assistant.
