National Course of Transcultural Mediation – New Edition

On Tuesday 6 April 2010, the new edition of the “Project for the Promotion of Migrants’ Access to Health Care Services and the development of information and advice activities in Italian Local Health Services (ASL)” will start at the NIHMP.

Based on the positive experience of PASS (a project supported by the Ministry of Labour and Social Policies, involving about 50 health care structures and training 100 transcultural mediators in Italy), the NIHMP decided to finance with its own funds a new edition of the project. Health centres in Tuscany, Lazio, Sicily and Puglia, which were excluded from the PASS project, have been selected.

The organisation of the project remained the same: a first training part on transcultural mediation (200-hours theory course, divided into 40 lessons at the NIHMP and 160 at the focal-point structures and a practical part of 200 hours with an expert mediator as a tutor) and a 4-months post-training part allowing labour insertion in the involved structures.

Also objectives and outcomes are the same of the PASS project:
- to develop new models to promote the access of migrants to health care services
- to promote the role of the transcultural mediator in health care structures
- to provide technical support for the creation of transcultural social and health services in Italian Local Health Care

Structures and Hospitals
- to provide information and guidance on the regulations on immigration, asylum and access to health care services

The following themes will be dealt with:
- health education
- social and demographic aspects of migration
- transcultural mediation
- health care cultural mediation
- organisation of the National Health Service
- regulations