Learn more about healthcare in Bedford

The Health Awareness Event is taking place at Queen’s Park Community Centre, in Marlborough Road, Queen’s Park, Bedford between 1pm and 3.30pm.

The ACCM UK initiative has been organised in partnership with Sue Ryder St John’s Hospice, Bedford Borough Council and Healthwatch Bedford Borough.

Alongside local pharmacists, GPs and community clinical workers, staff from St John’s Hospice in Moggerhanger will also be at the event.

They have produced the DVD to help people understand more about hospices and the services available – both at the hospice and within the community.

The DVD, also available on YouTube, was the brain child of the hospice’s Black Minority Ethnic (BME) outreach worker Fsella Afzal-Pagliari who has been working with ethnic minority communities in the area for the last two years.

Fsella said: “At St John’s we work within a very diverse community and we realised we weren’t reaching into those communities effectively.

“It’s been a privilege to closely with other healthcare providers, community leaders and our patients to help more people from ethnic communities understand what we do and how we can help them.

“The idea for the DVD came from discussions with lots of different people who recognised there was a need to reach out to people using multi-lingual platforms where language can be a barrier. 
“I was very grateful to have the help of patients and their families from different communities who agreed to share their stories on camera.

“The film is translated into the main languages spoken in Bedford including Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, Polish, Italian and Gujarati.

“Some languages don’t even have a word for ‘hospice’ so explaining the concept is tricky. Using real stories is the perfect way to get the message across.”