Help women navigate the health care system in Sweden.

Why we care: Immigrant women underutilize maternal health care, mostly due to lack of information in their own language and not having a tradition of preventive health care.

How we’re solving this: By working with the Somali immigrant community to educate families about maternal health services via workshops, meetings, films, and distributing materials in their own language.

The Somali population in Sweden has increased by 300% in recent years and there are now approximately 50,000 Somalis in Sweden. Of those, 10,000 live in the Stockholm area.

We’ll increase awareness and understanding about the challenges that immigrant Somali women face among 100 Swedish doctors, midwives, and other health workers over 12 months. In addition, we’ll offer maternal healthcare classes to support 500 immigrant Somali women on their rights to access post and pre natal care.

We’ll distribute leaflets and posters in Arabic on maternal health care to hospitals and community centers. Somali women who have been in Sweden over the long-term will host discussion groups, information meetings, and knowledge exercises in Somali dialects.

We recognize that some Somali women may be apprehensive to attend healthcare classes due to cultural restrictions or fear. Also, to overcome language barriers, we’ll host discussion groups by offering Arabic translations and using pictorial diagrams.

At the end of our project, we’ll conduct surveys to capture how knowledge about health care and rights has changed. We aim to increase understanding and knowledge levels by at least 10%. We’ll also survey Swedish health workers to analyze whether or not they are more aware of the challenges Somali women face.