“As a Community Educator, I have visited several of these health agencies in the city over the last few months. The feedback I received from them was that they wanted to be culturally-sensitive but didn’t always know what questions to ask or how to reach these communities, says Jennifer Mills from the London Cross Cultural Leaner Centre (LCCLC).

LCCLC recently hosted Ethno-Specific Health Promotion, a workshop geared towards staff at community health agencies better understand and help their clients.

The workshop which Mills describes as an open discussion, focused on four key topics - traditional healing, key values, barriers to health and health promotion.

Participants included Londoners from Colombia, Nicaragua, China, Burma (Myanmar), Somalia, Eritrea, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Libya, Italy and Slovenia.

There are no current plans for another workshop although Mills admits “it would be interesting to do it again with different communities and perspectives.”

You can obtain a summary of the workshop by emailing jmills at lcclc.org for an electronic copy.