Franciscan leads new effort to support Burmese with outreach team
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Franciscan Health is rolling out its Burmese Outreach Team. It’ll work within the community to improve outcomes and help assimilate into American culture.
The Burmese population has grown to 25,000 to the south of the city. Compared to other Asian groups, Burmese still have the highest poverty rates, lowest income and lowest English proficiency. All of them create barriers to health, and it’s important that we address them.
It’s been years since the first Burmese immigrants started calling Indianapolis home, but there’s a lot more work to be done to make it home. It starts with improving health outcomes.
“Ultimately our goal is to help this community be the healthiest it can,” Kate Hill-Johnson, with Franciscan’s Community Health Improvement, said.
Franciscan Health has been doing advocacy work since the early days, but it is adding on to the work in the hospital and moving into the community. Forming a Burmese Outreach Team that’ll serve as community liaisons. They will direct community members to resources for health care, language assistance, education preparation and job training.
“Navigating resources is always challenging,” Hill-Johnson said. “And I can’t imagine myself trying to do that without knowing the language, or how to drive around, or what does a doctors office even look like.”
Nancy Sui’s family is from Burma. She says the language barriers are wide, but the cultural ones may be a bit more broad.
“A lot of people are from villages, different villages. They don’t have any access to health care in general. It was all very new to them,” Nancy Sui with Burmese Outreach said.
The work will also extend to educate the community on navigating health systems, yearly checkups and prenatal and post-partum care. Sui says, it’s vital work, but for her, it’s a passion that’s growing.
“Being there for our community, our Burmese community actually. Just to think about it. Having that little impact in that community is actually very encouraging for me as well, Sui said.