Fostering effective communication in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) communities: an interview with Professor John Hajek

Juerong Qiu

As COVID-19 swept through Victoria since 2020, we have seen the need for effective communication to improve access to and equity in healthcare. Here we explore the experiences and communication needs of CALD (Culturally and Linguistically Diverse) communities during the COVID-19 pandemic with Professor John Hajek.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted lives and people’s health globally, but some social groups are in vulnerable positions, such as people with disabilities, the elderly or people with chronic conditions. What made you turn your attention to communication problems in CALD communities, in particular?

Obviously, many of us in the School of Languages and Linguistics have culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. That’s one of the strengths of SOLL. I was raised and grew up in a cultural-and-linguistically-diverse situation, so I feel a lot of empathy for CALD communities, particularly in the pandemic context. What’s clear is that there was a big problem during the pandemic, especially concerning the media and the press. What I’m interested in is trying to work out what different factors are in play that either facilitate or disrupt the sending and the receiving of accurate information about Covid-19. And there are so many languages and communities that have to be addressed at the same time very quickly. We use the label “CALD” as a blanket term that represents incredible diversity, not just in terms of cultural-linguistic background, but also concerning the proficiency in English, access to information, needs around the pandemic, etc.

This research project involves scholars in different disciplines. Could you tell us about the intention behind this?

I worked many years in cross-disciplinary research, so I have really good relationships with colleagues in other faculties who might work on a number of projects in health or computer science. Also, there are people within SOLL with different interests and experiences. So we’ve been trying to bring all that expertise and experience together in the hope that by working together, we can do positive things for improving health communication in Victoria.

How the project started and proceeded? What funding did you receive?

Our work on understanding CALD communities’ communication needs and practices during the pandemic was facilitated, in the first instance, by a Faculty of Arts grant, which was very helpful. That allowed us to do a pilot study in which we looked at communication issues about the pandemic with three specific communities. We looked at the Chinese, Italian and Greek communities because our research team had specific cultural, and linguistic expertise in those languages and communities. At the time, there was huge anxiety and preoccupation about elderly people and whether they were getting information and how they were getting information. So that’s how we started. We did a pilot study looking at the elderly in those three communities. We have since been able to publish our results.

And then based on that project, we were successful in obtaining funding from the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH), which is a department of the Government of Victoria. They asked us to do a much bigger study looking at communication practices and needs of different CALD communities. They were specifically interested in newer communities, not so much the long-established ones, like the Chinese, Italian and Greek communities. DFFH is particularly interested in other communities that haven’t received a lot of attention and are more recently established. So we focused in particular on communities from different parts of Africa and Asia. And then we conducted a whole series of interviews with community members and community leaders. Many of the things that we uncovered weren’t necessarily novel. Different communities have different needs; different communities wanted more information in their languages; different communities want better quality information in their languages. Some community members are okay with English, while others said the older people want information in their language.

There is an assumption that people are using the same social media, but we found that it’s not the case. Most communities use WhatsApp as the messaging app, but some communities use Viber. That was not known at the time. So DFFH and relevant authorities were advised to change their strategies and make sure that they are not just spreading information on WhatsApp or Facebook. They need to include other social media platforms like Viber. Then, we put together a preliminary report making any of these observations. Then we delivered a final report.

And what changes have there been in the delivery of and access to mediated health information?  

Relevant authorities are increasingly aware of the issues in communication. They’re starting to move, but greater attention to community-led initiatives is strongly advisable, such as community forums with medical practitioners. It is important to get more medical practitioners in the conversation because community members want to get health information directly from their doctors. As you know, there’s a lot of misinformation around the pandemic. A lot of information is coming from outside. One of the things that we discovered, a number of communities are getting information from the communities in their home countries, which was often very confusing or not accurate. Obviously, there was a lot of anxiety around vaccination, which is fair enough, and people have different ideas about getting vaccinated or not. So our research tries to address those concerns and change the messaging in such a way that community members were properly informed about what actually was going on.

Although this research did help to make adjustments, there’s still a lot more to do. Health care providers, whoever they might be, need to understand that there’s a lot more diversity than they may know about. For instance, in the case of Myanmar, which is formerly known as Burma, there are lots of small communities. Some of these communities are better known outside of their communities, but others are not known. And linguistic needs of each of these communities are very different. Some communities have literacy in Burmese and other communities from the same country don’t have literacy in Burmese and they would prefer information only in their language. If we are not aware of the actual situation and language differences in the communities, it is difficult to send health information to them. Thus, understanding that different communities have different communication needs is the first step. We need information about what the needs are. There was a lot of work put into establishing that kind of explanation.

What actions do you think mediators, community organizations and the government can do to facilitate effective communication in a post-pandemic future?

If there is a positive outcome of the pandemic, it is a much greater awareness of the need to communicate effectively with CALD communities. This will have to be ongoing because the pandemic will continue for a few more years. There are, of course, other health issues. I think a lot of the things that we’ve learned during the pandemic would be of ongoing benefit for public health communication in the long term. For instance, documents need to be simpler for communities to understand with less technical language. Our findings can be applied to the general English-speaking community as well in any case. A lot of medical information is often very technical. It’s unnecessarily the case. How do they make information more accessible and understandable in the long term? In terms of new health campaigns about other medical issues, they’ll be able to have a much better understanding of what they need to do to reach out to communities.