IMPROVING SOMALI HEALTH AWARENESS

iSHA (improving Somali health awareness) is a non-profit organisation, co-founded in December 2020, that aims to combat poor health literacy within the Somali community. There are approximately 108,000 Somali people residing in the UK according to the Office for National Statistics in 2018. Somali people are at a higher risk for developing COVID-19 amongst other diseases such as CVD and diabetes. Despite this, there are barely any research articles highlighting this. In addition, there is not a lot of information regarding health literacy within the Somali community and as such, one of iSHA’s aims is to spread awareness of this issue and publish research articles to fill the research gap for this community.

With the onset of COVID-19, an incredible surge in the spread of misinformation was observed, particularly through social media. Witnessing first-hand how quickly people in our communities were believing false information and spreading it to others truly reflected poor health awareness and therefore sparked a passion to want to strengthen the community to make better-informed health decisions.

Health literacy is defined as “the personal characteristics and social resources needed for individuals and communities to access, understand, appraise and use information and services to make decisions about health”.1 Poor health literacy is a growing issue with a global impact.

According to the NHS, 43-61% of English adults were shown to have difficulty understanding health information. If over half of English adults are struggling with health literacy, the question arises: what number of ethnic minorities are struggling as a result of English being their second or third language?

With a surge in technological advancements in the last decade, information can be easily accessed by millions of people. This information can be uploaded by anyone and can include personal opinions regarding various health issues, to critical information from governing bodies regarding guidelines for the current pandemic. As a result, the amount of information available has also surged exponentially; Sentell et al. (2020) refer to this as an “infodemic”.5 Filtering out what’s relevant, and more importantly, what is true, has now become increasingly difficult and it is having a direct impact on health literacy.

As part of iSHA, we currently produce a wide range of educational content on social media platforms which is focused on breaking down complicated health information, as well as holding Zoom Q&A webinars where we answer unique questions from Somalis both in the UK and in homeland Somalia, with an all Somali academic panel.

Our most recent event was a highly successful COVID-19 Q&A Zoom webinar where we invited several Somali academics, including an immunologist, clinical trials manager, and a cardiologist, to provide sought after answers regarding vaccine controversy to the Somali people in their mother tongue. We have also conducted an interview with a British Somali GP in Somali to help dispel further myths surrounding the pandemic.

As of current, we are focusing our content on COVID-19, however, we will soon be releasing content that will start to shed some light on other health issues that affect the Somali community including mental health and cancer. Furthermore, we are designing a study that highlights the effect of low health literacy in the Somali community and how iSHA is making a positive impact.

It is extremely vital that ethnic minority groups are provided with the information they need to digest and break down complicated health information that is written in their second or third language. We at iSHA, are here to make a change and empower Somalis to make guided and informed decisions about their health.

Zainab Jama, Co-Founder of iSHA

Fatumah Jama, Co-Founder of iSHA