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Supporting quality primary health care for patients of a refugee background.
The Refugees and Primary Health (RaPH) project is a partnership between key refugee health services, primary and tertiary care providers, divisions of general practice, settlement support services and refugee communities. It is funded by Queensland Health through the Connecting Health in Communities (CHIC) Chronic Disease initiative.
The project is managed by the Mater UQ Centre for Primary Health Care Innovation and works closely with the recently established Refugee Health Queensland service.
RaPH commenced in January 2009 and is funded until 30 June 2010. The project is focused on developing information and referral pathways to support primary health care professionals working with refugee communities and has compiled a list of key partners and web resources.
In September 2009 the project successfully updated the Queensland version of the GP Desktop Guide for Patients in General Practice. Limited hard copies are available from Refugee Health Queensland and RaPH project coordinators or can be downloaded from Foundation House.
Mater/UQ Centre for Primary Health Care Innovation
Queensland Program of Assistance to Survivors of Torture and Trauma provides a range of services to people from refugee backgrounds, including asylum seekers who have survived torture of war-related violence.
QPASTT provides direct services to adults, young people, children and families in the form of counselling, advocacy, group work, psycho-education, information sessions, recreational programs and natural therapies. Direct services to clients are coupled with referral, training and education roles aimed at developing and strengthening the resources of various communities and service providers.
The Multicultural Development Association (MDA) promotes multiculturalism and acts as a strategic mechanism for the empowerment of people from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
The Ethnic Communities Council of Queensland was established to promote multiculturalism and represent the interests of the many people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (CALD) that make up the broad social community of Queensland.
ECCQ’s activities and services encompass:
South East Alliance of General Practice (SEAGP) has produced a Care and Referral Pathway as part of the Queensland Health, Connecting Health Care in Communities (CHIC) Type 2 Diabetes Project. It aims to support general practices within the SEAGP geographical area to increase the capacity to manage the disease.
The pathway was developed in consultation with the CHIC Diabetes Project Clinical Advisory Group, which comprised:
The pathway shows how to build capacity for structured, systematic type 2 diabetes care and supports the development of patient self-management skills.
Brisbane South Division of General Practice is conducting a project called Connected: communicating and sharing information to improve patient care outcomes which aims to improve the long-term care of patients with chronic disease by linking patients to a model of improved information flow between general practice, secondary and tertiary care. Long-term care requires health and community service providers to work together to plan and provide care that can be shared between the GP and other carers in an accurate and timely fashion. This will be achieved by implementing a model of care for patients that is supported by a shared electronic health record (SEHR).
The Connecting Healthcare in Communities (CHIC) Initiative is a proactive approach to establishing partnerships to improve integration and service coordination to improve the health of all Queenslanders. The Brisbane North Partnership Council facilitates the CHIC iniative in the Brisbane North area. GPpartners provides secretariat support to the Council and is a partner organisation of the Council.
Partner organisations:
The following projects have been endorsed by the Brisbane North Partnership Council and Queensland Health to receive CHIC funding.
Queensland Health Resources for the public and for the health workforce can be accessed on the Queensland health web site.
The Refugee Health Research Centre (RHRC) at La Trobe University is located in the School of Social Sciences, Melbourne (Bundoora) campus. It is affiliated with the Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture (Foundation House) in Brunswick.
The RHRC promotes the health and wellbeing of refugee communities through applied and foundation research, teaching, continuing education and professional development.
The aims are to:
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