Culture Counts: Best Practices in Community Education in Mental Health and Addiction with Ethnoracial/ Ethnocultural Communities

Studies show that health promotion programs created for the mainstream population do not always work as well for ethnocultural communities. Culture Counts: A Road Map to Health Promotion is a new guide developed by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), and shows how to create and implement health promotion initiatives that will have an impact in ethnocultural communities.

The Culture Counts guide, available in online and PDF versions, covers issues related to health promotion in ethnocultural communities, and then provides links to online resources that explore each issue more deeply. This guide is intended for anyone working for a mainstream agency or organization who is considering undertaking a health promotion initiative with ethnocultural communities, or who has attempted to do so in the past but with unsatisfactory results.

Culture Counts: A Roadmap to Health Promotion

• About this guide
• Chapter 1 - Break down barriers
• Chapter 2 - Work with community partners
• Chapter 3 - Gather and analyze information
• Chapter 4 - Plan the initiative
• Chapter 5 - Translate and adapt
• Chapter 6 - Put the plan to work - and keep it working
• Chapter 7 - Follow up
• Acknowledgments
• Glossary

The guide is the outcome of the final phase of the Culture Counts Project, a provincial project, which began in October 2003. The project aims to research, identify and develop a best practices model for community education and knowledge exchange in mental health and addiction with culturally / linguistically diverse communities to ensure that programs effectively meet the needs of these communities.

Culture Counts is founded on a partnership between CAMH and seven community-based organizations serving the following groups: the Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Tamil communities in the GTA; in Peel Region, the Punjabi community; in Ottawa the Somali community; and the Serbian community in Windsor. The partnering organizations include:

• Portuguese Mental Health and Addiction Services, Toronto Western Hospital
• Polycultural Immigrant and Community Services
• Punjabi Community Health Centre
• Society for the Aid of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) Minorities – SACEM
• The Multicultural Council of Windsor-Essex County
• The Somali Centre for Family Services in Ottawa
• Vasantham – A Tamil Seniors Wellness Centre (PDF)

The project’s other partners include the Ontario Public Health Association (OPHA) and the Association of Local Public Health Agencies (ALPHA).

The report, Culture Counts: Best Practices in Community Education in Mental Health and Addiction with Ethnocultural / Ethnoracial Communities (PDF only), outlines the best practice approaches arising from research and the experiences of the participating communities.

The best practices model guided the adaptation and development of public education materials to reflect culturally appropriate low-risk drinking messages. Subsequently, the Low-Risk Drinking Guidelines (LRDG) were culturally adapted and translated for five of the participating communities, including Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian and Tamil. The principles for cultural adaptation, plus recommendations from the communities, guided the design and messages of the Serbian and Somali posters. The resulting community education materials are available in a downloadable PDF format:

• Polish version of LRDG brochure
• Portuguese version of LRDG brochure
• Punjabi version of LRDG brochure
• Russian version of LRDG brochure
• Tamil version of LRDG brochure
• Serbian alcohol-related poster
• English poster based on Serbian poster design

More information is available about the project, its partners and products.

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