Francesco Vacchiano
Research Projects
T-SHaRE: Transcultural skills for health and care
T-SHaRE project intends to improve the organization  of health services to make them more accessible to migrants, to improve  the relation and communication between health professionals, cultural mediators and immigrant Communities, to enhance the migrant's values and  approaches, their knowledge and competences related to health and health care. That means to define, enhance and recognize the expertise of cultural mediation in the health care sector in order to remove forms of exclusion, rejection or misunderstanding that often occur in health services, when the users have  a  hard  time  orienting  themselves  in  a system of signs, interpretations, procedures and interventions that are often distant or disrespectful of their condition and culture.  In particular, today functions and responsibilities of the cultural mediator  in the area of health care are not clearly defined or shared in the Member State and at the European level. This often creates misunderstandings with health care providers and physicians, which affect the intervention. This emerges  particularly  in the complex and delicate area of migrant women's health and mental health, where the health dimension is closely related with the social, cultural, relational, legal and economic dimension:  migrant  women  have  an  higher    index  of neonatal mortality and preterm / low weight births; migrants with psychiatric needs find often difficulties to access to  and to receive psychiatric treatment. Furthermore, immigrants in the EU territory are not  only  users  of  health  services,  but sometimes they have and bring to Europe knowledge, practices, cultural representations of illness and health, medical practices, help relationships, which potentially represent an opportunity for innovation and improvement of European health models for all European citizens. T-SHaRE will then bring out different visions and practices in the field of health and care, with a view to make them talk. The main aims of the...
Project Information
2009-11-01
2012-04-30
Project Partners