Health ambassadors of both genders

Kolding Municipality has succeeded in recruiting ambassadors from ethnic minorities of both genders to promote health activities among their own ethnic groups.

Health is normally women's domain, especially regarding rehabilitation, healthcare and health education. In the ethnic minority families, health concerns are usually women's responsibility as long as no outside intervention is needed. A husband interacts with the surrounding society - the healthcare system and the local authorities. He is expected to be able to navigate the healthcare system when members of his family need professional assistance. Non-western citizens are more frequent users of healthcare services than the Danes. They have more health injuring habits and are more exposed to lifestyle-based illnesses. Kolding Municipality attempts to minimize this difference of healthcare use between the ethnic groups. In order to achieve this, we have educated Health Ambassadors with non-western backgrounds, representing the four main ethnic minorities in the municipality.

The intervention builds on the Peer-to-peer education principle, where the ambassadors have the same background as the target audience. Furthermore, they have access to settings that healthcare professionals will never have. They are able to put health promotion on the agenda and support a healthy lifestyle in the specific groups' own cultural settings.

To establish a strong foundation for the group of ambassadors, it wad found important to recruit both men and women, to interact and communicate with both genders. Issues such as reproductive health cannot be discussed in mixed gender settings, though itisan important topic for both genders. Furthermore, meeting in separate groups for men and women are common in these cultures. Kolding succeeded in assembling a group with one third of the ambassadors being male. As a result it is possible now to communicate health aspects such as nutrition, physical activities, vitamin D, sexual health and knowledge of the healthcare system through cultural associations as well as the ethnic women's own social networks. The health ambassadors were educated in December 2009 and have already been involved in more 50 meetings.