Products & Research
MamaTalk: a multilingual pregnancy app
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MamaTalk is a multilingual pregnancy app, developed to support women in Australia who prefer to speak languages other than English.
Existing research indicates a lack of linguistic support for women-specific health care and for the needs of pregnant and post-natal women, which can result in adverse social and health outcomes (see eg Mangesha, Dune, and Perz, 2016; Owens, Dandy, and Hancock, 2016; Hughson et al, 2018).
An example of this is seen in a study by Mander et al (2016) of women who prefer to communicate in languages other than English in Queensland, which revealed that less than 50% of pregnant and post-natal women who required translation and interpretation services are able to access them.
Furthermore, individuals who feel less confident in their ability to communicate their wellbeing needs and to understand health information being shared with them may be more likely to miss appointments and less likely to adhere to treatment regimens (See e.g. Doolan et al, 2022, Gua et al, 2019, Nancarrow, Bradbury, and Avila, 2014.). As importantly, the availability of timely and culturally and linguistically appropriate information also impacts on feelings of inclusion and wellbeing more broadly (Nunn et al, 2021).
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MamaTalk was developed with funding from Red Cross Australia and Telstra Foundation’s Humanitech Labs.
La Trobe University are the research and evaluation partner organiation.
MamaTalk content was developed through collaboration with Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health, Birth for Humankind, Fourth Trimester Continuity of Care and midwifery consultants from NSW Health.
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The MamaTalk pilot evaluation provides qualitative insight into the effectiveness of MamaTalk in achieving its aims of improving access to accurate, timely, and culturally contextualised maternal and child health information for women who prefer to communicate in a language other than English. The evaluation data suggests that MamaTalk has succeeded in delivering a high quality, culturally appropriate tool to meet the needs of participants.
Pilot participants universally noted that MamaTalk was easy to understand and user- friendly. Participants expressed the opinion that information provided was accurate and culturally safe. All of the participants expressed increased confidence in understanding, retaining, and communicating health information with their care providers. This increased confidence facilitated a self-reported sense of agency, wellbeing, and trust in care relationships among participants.
We are currently developing a publicly available whitepaper, which will be available for download shortly. For more information, or a copy of the pilot evaluation, please email the team.
Multilingual Health Alerts: Department of Health
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The Australian healthcare system is responsible for meeting the needs of a highly diverse population. There are approximately 350 languages spoken at home in Australia. Nationally, over 20% of the population report speaking a language other than English in the home.
The challenges of providing healthcare services and information to such a culturally and linguistically diverse population are well documented. These challenges contribute to increased stigmatisation, social isolation, and comparatively poorer health outcomes for members of culturally and linguistically diverse communities.
In 2022, a proof-of-concept pilot of Solinary as a tool for distributing urgent health information communication in multiple languages. Alerts from the Department of Health currently provided in English were translated into the following languages: Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Vietnamese, Greek, Italian, Arabic, Fijian, and Tongan.
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Solinary Health Alerts were developed in partnership with the Department of Health Victoria, supported by LaunchVic.
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The pilot evaluation indicates that Solinary has a strong potential to achieve its aims of improving access to accurate, timely, and culturally contextualised health information for community members who prefer to communicate in a language other than English. Moreover, Solinary may support the work of community groups and health organisations by reducing pressures on limited translation, time, and care resources.
Participants in the evaluation noted that Solinary has the potential to address communication needs beyond the health alerts examined in this evaluation. They suggested the potential for Solinary to meet urgent community needs in relation to emergencies such as fires, floods and extreme heat days, as well as less urgent but important information such as traffic and driving information.
The evaluations of Solinary as a tool for dissemination of health alerts reinforces the finding of the evaluation of Solinary for sharing maternal and child health information. Both evaluations indicate a strong potential for Solinary to positively impact the current knowledge transfer landscape. In particular it was noted that:
• Solinary provides culturally contextualised, accurate, and community vetted messaging in language. This reduces the need for organisations or individuals to undertake translation, thereby reducing the risk of misinformation of non-transmission of information.
• Solinary is easily adaptable to diverse conditions, emergencies, and contexts.
• Solinary has been shown to have capacity for effective and timely transmission of audio and audio-visual information, as well as text-based information. This has been piloted with maternal child health information in Arabic.
• Solinary is easily adaptable to various information circulation and processing models including top down and direct to consumer models.
For a full copy of the Solinary pilot report, please get in touch.
Environmental Emergency Alerts
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In an emergency, people who prefer to communicate in languages other than English struggle to access the information they need in a timely way. This has significant impacts for the health and safety of some of Australia’s most vulnerable people, including especially those who have recently arrived in Australia and those who have limited opportunities to build English language capacities.
This project aims to investigate and address the problem of emergency communication with culturally and linguistically diverse communities during events that represent a threat to human life, including floods, bushfires, heat stress and disease outbreaks.
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La Trobe University
Bureau of Meterology
Albury-Wodonga Ethnic Communities Council
Good Hood
We are currently seeking additional partners for further research 2023-2026. Click here for more information
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We are currently seeking additional partners for further research 2023-2026. Click here for more information.
