cohealth wins Pride in Health + Wellbeing Award for health promotion innovations that improve health outcomes for LGBTQIA+ community

Not-for-profit community health service, cohealth, last night was recognised as a ‘Gold Service Provider’ and won a national Health Innovation Award for the work the organisation is doing to improve the health outcomes of people from the LGBTQ+ community. The Awards recognise the work cohealth is doing to improve sports participation and breastfeeding rates among the LGBTQIA+ community.

The Awards are presented by Pride in Health + Wellbeing (PIHW), the national not-for-profit inclusion program for the health, wellbeing, human services, and community care sector, spearheaded by Australia’s largest LGBTQ health organisation ACON.

cohealth’s Health Promotions team was awarded the PIHW Health Innovation Award prize for projects including:

• Supporting sports clubs to be safer and more inclusive for the LGBTQIA+ community by partnering with Proud2Play to deliver the Rainbow Ready Clubs program to community sports clubs
• Developing a campaign which to create breastfeeding-supportive community spaces across Moonee Valley Council, Maribyrnong Council to support and promote, which highlight that LGBTQIA+ families have valuable experiences with human milk feeding in all its forms
• Partnering with a local artist who developed Transomatics, a podcast that delivers a breath-work and movement guide, made by and for trans and gender-diverse people

Chief Executive, Nicole Bartholomeusz said that she was immensely proud for cohealth to be named a Gold Service Provider, for the second year in a row, and of the work of the Health Promotions team in delivering impactful programs for the LGBTQIA+ community.

“There is still much work to be done to improve access to health services for people from the LGBTQIA+ community. The health disparity experienced by people who are sexually- and gender-diverse is unacceptable and can be addressed with culturally safe health and wellbeing services, and targeted health promotions programs,” said Ms Bartholomeusz.

“As a mainstream community health organisation, cohealth’s Health Promotion team is uniquely placed to create innovative projects by drawing on a team made up of health promotion specialists, community development workers and creative arts experts,

“Despite recent decreases in State Government funding for community-based health promotion activities, the Health Promotion team continue to effectively deliver impactful health promotion initiatives,” said Ms Bartholomeusz.

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More information: media@cohealth.org.au or 0499 101 638

About cohealth: cohealth is a not-for-profit community health organisation that provides low-cost and free local health and support services including medical, dental, allied health, mental health, aged care and counselling, and many specialist health services across Melbourne’s CBD, northern and western suburbs as well as statewide.