Health Expos

Hepatitis SA has been fortunate enough to attend community health expos for many years and are delighted that these events have come back after a short hiatus due to COVID.

In February and March this year, Hepatitis SA attended the Australian Refugee Association Health Expo in Salisbury and the Sonder Close the Gap Event at Wayville Showgrounds.

The Australian Refugee Association (ARA) Event was held on Thursday, 23 February at the Salisbury Community Hub. Eighteen services were in attendance, providing information and education to the community. The Education team from Hepatitis SA attended and engaged with people from multiple different communities including Afghani, Venezuelan, Syrian, Filipino, and Spanish.

A total of 28 people from the event entered our quiz raffle to win a voucher. We used this quiz to talk to community members to ensure they had a solid understanding of hepatitis C treatment and hepatitis B monitoring.

The Sonder Close the Gap Day event was held in the Jubilee Pavillion at Wayville Showgrounds on Thursday, 16 March. This event is held each year, and jointly presented by Sonder (who provide services to support mental health, alcohol and other drug use, homelessness, disability, employment, Aboriginal health and chronic disease) and Nunkuwarrin Yunti (who provide contemporary, culturally based health, social and emotional wellbeing services to build a healthy Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community). Both Hepatitis SA’s education team and the Clean Needle Program Peer Project team attended the event.

The education team engaged a henna artist to provide free henna to attendees as an example of safe body art. While attendees were lining up for the henna, it was an excellent opportunity for staff to chat with them about viral hepatitis.

The event was opened with a Welcome to Country by local elder Uncle Moogy, and had many musical acts performing throughout the day including Katie Aspel, the Tal-Kin-Jeri Dance Group, Nathan May, the Nancy Bates Trio and Eddie Peters. It was attended by many health and community services who were there to provide information to attendees, as well as various health checks. There were also many fun activities to participate in like jumping castles, kids craft, Jiu Jitsu demonstrations, live music, an animal farm as well as a meet-and-greet with some AFL and SANFL players.

There were well over 1000 people who attended the event, and the educators engaged with 87 community members for the quiz raffle.