Partnership Health Canterbury

Partnership Health Canterbury strives to improve the health of all its enrolled communities in Canterbury by supporting the delivery of high quality primary health care, promoting good health to stop people getting ill and working hard to ensure everyone is accessing primary health care when they need it.

Partnership Health Canterbury – Te Kei o Te Waka is a not for profit organisation and was launched in April 2004. It is the Primary Health Organisation (PHO) that has the largest enrolled population in New Zealand. There are more than 366,000 people enrolled with Partnership Health Canterbury, including over 23,000 Maori, 23,000 Asian and 8,800 Pacific Islanders.

Partnership Health Canterbury works in partnership with its communities and 98 General Practices and other health service providers to improve the health and well-being of the enrolled population.

Visit the website of Partnership Health Canterbury.

Projects 2012
Health Promotion

Education around primary healthcare, NZ health service, access to services for refugees and migrant with a focus on the following:

  • Translation of health related material.
  • Creation of a language specific website.
  • Cultural training to medical professionals and associated groups.
  • Community education around services such as cervical screening, breast screening, diabetes awareness and mental health
Chinese and Korean Cooking Classes

International research is pointing to the rapid increase of Type 2 Diabetes amongst Asian peoples. This increase is exacerbated by the acculturation process. Asian migrants are not healthy and wealthy as the myth suggests. Based on the results and recommendations of ‘Nutritional Needs Assessment of East Asians Living in Christchurch’, Partnership Health has developed a cooking programme for Chinese and Korean migrants. This is considered an appropriate strategy in addressing the identified needs for linguistically and culturally appropriate nutrition resources and services.

The main objectives of the Cooking Programme are to:

  • Improve participants’ knowledge of healthy eating, healthy unfamiliar western food and healthy cooking methods.
  • Knowledge and skills about how to make healthy food choices.
  • Skills to use unfamiliar cooking facilities such as electric ovens.
  • Skills to cook healthy easy western food to increase food variety. The ‘From Cooking Skills to Life Skills’ cooking programme has been adapted to meet the above objectives.

A special version of the ‘Great Little Cookbook’ has now been translated into Chinese and is currently being translated into Korean – the first such translations in New Zealand.

Website Information

Access to linguistically-specific health information by both patients and health professionals is difficult. Whilst much material is available, locating it when needed is impossible unless English is the first language.

Partnership Health is developing a ‘Refugee and Migrant’ section on their website. This will cover the following:

  • Links to known health information which can be of help to both patient and health professional.
  • Downloadable information on disease, health access and prevention that health professionals can access to give to their patients. This is accessible by both patients and medical professionals.
  • Readily accessible consumer information on disease, nutrition, education, health access.
  • Links to other organisations such as Family Planning and the Cancer Society where language-specific information is available.

The HealthPathways website – accessed by many medical professionals in Canterbury – now has cultural information

Advocacy for appropriate linguistic communication in Christchurch

The earthquake-related disasters in Christchurch have highlighted a severe lack of understanding and acceptance of the need for appropriate linguistic communication in Christchurch. One of the key issues is that currently, earthquake-related information is not reaching Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) Communities. Partnership Health Canterbury is therefore one of a number of Christchurch-based organisations advocating to strengthen and improve the quality, broaden the reach and streamline the delivery of timely (emergency-related) information disseminated to CALD Communities.

Mental Health Access

Access to mainstream mental health services by those from refugee and migrant backgrounds is woeful. This is mainly due to the lack of culturally aware services; the European counselling model not being suited for those from non-European countries. A second aspect is the availability of linguistically suitable counsellors; counselling through an interpreter is not best practice. Partnership Health Canterbury is piloting a mental health counselling service specifically for those from CALD backgrounds. Based at the new Christchurch Migrants Centre, this service will employ counsellors from Chinese, Korean and refugee backgrounds.

Dental Project

Many people from refugee backgrounds arrive with severe oral health issues. Whilst those under 18 can take advantage of the free under-18 dental care, those who are adults cannot. Partnership Health Canterbury funds a dental health project for adults with severe dental issues. Whilst we are unable to cover items such as dentures, we can ensure that people obtain basic treatment and relief from – mostly – long standing dental issues.

Contact : Wayne Reid, wayne@partnershiphealth.org.nz

Back to top