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Sexual health in comic form

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To celebrate youth week this year, the Multicultural Sexual Health Network (MSHN) held a forum to share knowledge and tools to provide quality sexual health and healthy relationships education to young people from refugee and migrant backgrounds. We also launched our new resource, SHARE.

SHARE is a tool developed by CEH and technology studio Paper Giant, to help facilitate conversations with young people about sexual health, healthy relationships, gender and law. The comics offer young people the opportunity to freely explore these themes in a fun and engaging way.

Research shows that young people from refugee and migrant backgrounds are interested to learn about sexual health, but are unlikely to look for information themselves.

Young people, particularly from refugee backgrounds may not have had opportunities for formal education, or sexuality education and may only come to learn about sexual health issues when facing a crisis such as an unplanned pregnancy or sexually transmissible infection. While some form of sexuality education is required in Australian schools, the quality and content varies greatly.

My own experience of sexuality education as a cisgendered white female in an all-girls school with no religious affiliation was inadequate to say the least. Our teachers cancelled normal classes for 2 periods (the periods relating to classes, not the menstrual type) one day during year 9. It was almost as if they suddenly realised they needed to fit in an hour and a half of sexual health education into our six years of secondary school and they were going to slip it in that day. Like many things slipped in haphazardly, the results were sub-par, albeit, in this case, memorable.

A hand-shake game highlighting the ills of having sex with lots of people without a condom, may have been effective had we been empowered with skills in negotiating sex and condom use.

I'm not sure if there was a condom demonstration, my only memory of a condom in that session at all, was when my best friend's conservative Catholic mum walked into the classroom as our art teacher was blowing up a condom like a balloon, thus ending the school based sexual education for the class of 2002.

There has been a greater emphasis on sexuality education since then, with comprehensive programs available and some impressive new resources addressing the vital areas around sex, such as pleasure, porn, consent, gender and rights. I, with my above-mentioned white privileged status, love these resources, but with more than 26% of people in Australia born outside of Australia and another 26% with at least one parent born in another country, mainstream sexuality education tools may not be adequately reaching a significant proportion of our young people.

Lamisse Hamouda, who spoke eloquently about the importance of intersectionality in sexual health education at the MSHN forum, also wrote this incredible article, expanding my understanding of what sexuality education really should be.

Lamisse discusses the many categories that young people (and indeed us all) inhabit, such as socio-economic status, gender, culture, faith/religion, migration status, citizenship, sexuality and the make-up of the family unit.

Lamisse highlights how mainstream sexuality education reflects "the suburban white middle to upper class Australian experience, one where sexuality stereo-typically emerges with the imbibing of vodka cruisers at house parties and skate parks..." and asks how she, as a mixed-race Muslim woman could learn to navigate her sexuality when her cultural and social norms were not reflected in the curriculum or culture around her.

Lamisse argues for an intersectional framework to be integrated into sexuality education where the identities of young people are acknowledged, data is disaggregated, diverse perspectives and truths are acknowledged and there is ongoing dialogue where typically excluded voices are prioritised (seriously, please read her article!).

While SHARE appears as a relatively simple resource, a group of comics, with open questions (for example "What is happening in this comic?") participants are given the opportunity to explore the resource from their perspective. There is a facilitator's guide, to ensure key messages about sexuality and health are being addressed, but there is no wrong answer.

While SHARE is not a single solution, and is based on a limited (but expanding) set of scenarios, it presents more opportunities for diverse young people to find something to identify with, not simply identifying them as a homogenous group of 'young people'.

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Introducing SHARE - Sexuality Education in Comics

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To celebrate youth week this year, the Multicultural Sexual Health Network (MSHN) held a forum to share knowledge and tools to provide quality sexual health and healthy relationships education to young people from refugee and migrant backgrounds. We also launched our new resource, SHARE.

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Translated health resources

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Health Translations provides online access to quality health information in over 100 different languages. You can search more than 15,000 online resources by topic, language, keyword and organisation.

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With rapid growth in Victoria's international student (IS) population, service providers have registered alarm about unplanned pregnancy in heterosexual students and HIV infection in same-sex attracted international students.

We argue these outcomes are the end result of unmet need for sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education in the IS population. IS receive little or no SRH education in their countries of origin and upon arrival in Australia.
Read more

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Responding to diversity: meeting the sexual and reproductive health needs of international students

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With rapid growth in Victoria's international student (IS) population, service providers have registered alarm about unplanned pregnancy in heterosexual students and HIV infection in same-sex attracted international students. We argue these outcomes are the end result of unmet need for sexual and reproductive health (SRH) education in the IS population.

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The Multicultural Health and Support Service (MHSS) convened a working group to organise a consultative forum on the topic of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) men who have sex with men (MSM).

Concern has often been expressed in the HIV/🤬 service sector around the experience and health
needs of men in this group, in part because there is not a lot of research on the topic.

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The Multicultural Health and Support Service (MHSS) convened a working group to organise a consultative forum on the topic of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) men who have sex with men (MSM).

Concern has often been expressed in the HIV/AIDS service sector around the experience and health
needs of men in this group, in part because there is not a lot of research on the topic.

Read more Double-Trouble_MHSS_Reeders

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Double trouble? the health needs of culturally diverse men who have sex with men

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The Multicultural Health and Support Service (MHSS) convened a working group to organise a consultative forum on the topic of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) men who have sex with men (MSM). Concern has often been expressed in the HIV/AIDS service sector around the experience and health needs of men in this group, in part because there is not a lot of research on the topic.

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Preview: Rape on Campus | Al Jazeera Documentary

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on Laa Chol

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The alleged murder in the Melbourne CBD last weekend of Laa Chol, a 19-year-old woman of South Sudanese heritage, drew the attention of Peter Dutton, the Minister for Home Affairs, Immigration and Border Protection.

'This is a tragic and needless loss of a young life,' Mr Dutton said in a statement to Fairfax Media.

'There is a major law and order problem in Victoria and more people are going to be hurt until the rule of law is enforced by the Victorian Government. We don't have these problems with Sudanese gangs in NSW or Queensland.'

Alison Coelho, co-manager of the Centre for Culture Ethnicity and Health and manager of the Multicultural Health and Support Services, responds.

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Laa Chol deserves better

Like most of you, I was saddened and shocked by the death of a young woman over the weekend. Laa Chol was found dead on the 56th floor of the EQ Tower early Saturday morning. Speaking to colleagues on Monday, we all remarked on how it was another example of the violence that women are facing in Australia. This is a global problem we are not exempt from, and it is disturbing how common this sort of incident is becoming. However, I was angered that some politicians and the media saw this death very differently. The approach to this sort of violence and the way we look at new migrant and refugee communities really needs to be rethought.

Before I outline my thoughts about this, I think it is important to say that on behalf of the organisation I work for, I would like to express my heartfelt sadness and condolences to Laa Chol's family and offer support to them in what must be an extremely distressful time. We are so sorry for your loss and want you to know that we are thinking of you, your loved ones and your community during this difficult period.

We hope that the compassion that many of us are feeling reaches you and that some empathy reaches other people in Australia where it is sorely needed.

Like many people I was upset and angry about Peter Dutton's comments in the wake of this incident, linking it to a larger campaign to vilify the South Sudanese community in Victoria. As a woman of colour, I find it wounding that somehow this death has been reduced to discussion of an individual's race alone. Somehow it feels like the violence she experienced means less than if it had happened to a young white woman.

The minister knows that dozens of women have been killed violently this year in Australia. He should acknowledge this is a real problem that needs to be addressed by politicians and the community. To use the tragic death of a young black women in this way is not worthy of someone who represents us.

I would encourage all politicians to listen to the Victoria Police, who have pleaded that political figures not use this incident to generalise about an entire community of people. Commander Stuart Bateson, who is responsible for liaising with the African-Australian Community Taskforce, said on 3AW: 'The idea [is] that when we start to make that an issue bigger than what it is, then we start to racialise it and target a specific community. That leads to some unintended consequences. That means a whole community feels vilified.'

This death reminds us that as a community we have failed women over and over again. That failure occurs in a multitude of ways across the health and wellbeing sector. Many already acknowledge the health sector is a complicated system for most people to navigate. To its credit, the Victorian Government's multicultural policy states that women and children from refugee and migrant communities face significant disadvantage in health and wellbeing.

We need to address these disadvantages. At the moment, unfortunately people are often labelled by services as being 'one thing'. So if you need translated health services, you attend a clinic specialising in multicultural health. If you are facing domestic violence, you must approach a service that specialises in that. The health system operates, for the most part, in silos, but we know that as human beings, we are much more complex than one health concern. Too often these services have trouble intersecting and addressing people who are facing more than one issue.

In our organisations, we work with communities every day who face a range of challenges. I recently spoke with a young person from the Afghan community who identifies as a lesbian and is also infected with hepatitis B. I spoke to an older person from the Greek community suffering from an ice addiction who will not seek out help because he is worried about being stigmatised by his friends and family. We meet people like this every day and they often have to seek help from different services, with varying degrees of engagement and success.

It is only by combining a range of expertise that we can start to change our culture and deliver women the happiness and safety they have a right to. It is only by working in partnership (sometimes across many organisations) that these services will help people. We work with young people in this way in that informs them in a culturally sensitive way about healthy relationships, consent and the fundamentals of gender inequity in our society. We would encourage the health sector to examine their services and ask themselves if their approach is the same.

Laa Chol has been described by friends and family as a clever and happy person, as well as a second-year legal studies student and talented soccer player. She deserved better from all of us.
Alison Coelho is co-manager of the Centre for Culture Ethnicity and Health and manager of the Multicultural Health and Support Services.

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The alleged murder in the Melbourne CBD last weekend of Laa Chol, a 19-year-old woman of South Sudanese heritage, drew the attention of Peter Dutton, the Minister for Home Affairs, Immigration and Border Protection. 'This is a tragic and needless loss of a young life,' Mr Dutton said in a statement to Fairfax Media.

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We also like to speak to people on facebook

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Centre for Culture, Ethnicity & Health, Richmond, VIC. 592 likes. The Centre for Culture, Ethnicity and Health (CEH) is a unique agency that provides specialist information, training and support on...

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our LinkedIn is also available

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please follow us on twitter

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Please have a look at our website

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We manage the Health Translations Directory on behalf of the Department of Health & Human Services

The Health Translations Directory aims to improve the health of people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. We do this by providing health professionals and community members with reliable, accurate, and up to date health information in many different languages.

We have managed the site, on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services, since 2014. Since then we have partnered with many high profile organisations to increase the availability of content. We ensure the topics and languages represented are relevant. Every day hundreds of health professionals and people from our community access the site across Victoria, Australia and all around the world.
Read more about Health Translations Directory

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Home - Centre for Culture, Ethnicity & Health

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The Health Translations Directory aims to improve the health of people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. We do this by providing health professionals and community members with reliable, accurate, and up to date health information in many different languages. We have managed the site, on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services, since 2014.