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Description
Roma minority is in Slovenia and Europe recognized as vulnerable population. The problem we are addressing are resilient health inequalities between Roma minority and the main population. The main aim of the project is to empower and raise awareness in Roma population, especially women, with the goal to reduce health inequalities between them and the main population in Pomurje region in Slovenia. The target group are members of Roma community in Pomurje region, indirect target group are health workers and health institutions in Slovenia.
The identified needs of the target group are raised awareness and empowerment of members of Roma community to increase willingness to care for their own health, especially for Roma women. At the same time there is a need to strengthen cooperation between nongovernmental organisations, that are dealing with Roma issues and public and other institutions from this field for finding intersectoral and comprehensive solutions for reduction of health inequalities. The nongovernmental organisations need to develop their own capacities for permanent empowerment of members of Roma community for care for their health and raising flags and propose system improvements when they see or experience health system flaws or discrimination of Roma population.
Project will be implemented by two partner organisations, lead partner Union for development of Roma tourism, sport and culture “New path – Nevo drom” and partner organisation Center for health and development Murska Sobota.
Location of the project implementation is in Pomurje region, the results and knowledge of the project will be transferable to other regions in Slovenia and internationally.
Summary of project results
The problem we were addressing are resilient health inequalities between Roma minority and the main population. The main aim of the project was to empower and raise awareness in Roma population, especially women, with the goal to reduce health inequalities between them and the main population in Pomurje region in Slovenia. The target group were members of Roma community in Pomurje region, indirect target group were health workers and health institutions in Slovenia. The project focused on the activities for the promotion of healty life-style of Roma population. They also aimed at more unified approach and better cooperation with different stakeholders from the region but were only partly sucessful. The existing cooperation was enhanced but not really extended to other stakeholders. They were able to increase the number of Roma population who had responded to national cancer prevention initiatives (programme Zora and Svit) and went to the preventive check-up. The also extended their activities to small, remote areas where only a couple of families live and were the first organization to reach them.
A good result was achived by introducing Roma promotors of health who had established good cooperation with local Health Centre. They continue to be engaged both in the Roma community as well as a special consultat to Health Centre.