A review of literature, 2006 ( pdf - 438 KB) - ARCHI

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Macedonian Women’s Health Project Review of literature ___________________________________________________________________ Purpose The purpose of this review is to summarise available literature to provide a profile of the Macedonian community and factors that may influence the health and wellbeing of women from a Macedonian background who live in south eastern Sydney. The literature review is the initial focus of an information gathering process of the Macedonian Women’s Health Project to provide a better understanding of influences on Macedonian women’s health and attempt to identify opportunities for communitybased initiatives in the future. Health professionals may also find this resource useful as an aid to gaining a better understanding of the Macedonian-Australian community and, in particular, factors that may influence the health of Macedonian women. Given that south eastern Sydney is so culturally and linguistically diverse, this document may assist health professionals in taking into account the cultural uniqueness of the Macedonian community and in tailoring health interventions which may be appropriate and effective for them. It is acknowledged that the information contained in this literature review is limited to a summary of the contents of available published documents and therefore does not include knowledge of influences on the health and wellbeing of Macedonian women held by people who work in or with the community or women themselves. Hopefully, much of this knowledge will be captured through interviews and discussion groups with representatives from various sectors of the community and with women in the next phase of the Macedonian Women’s Health Project. Method Several electronic databases were searched to identify articles particularly relating to research on Macedonian women (CIAP, Medline, PsychINFO, Science Direct, Health and Society, Australian Public Affairs Information Service (APAIS) and APAIS- Health, Meditext, DRUG, HIV/ AIDS Database). Keywords used in this search were ‘Macedonian Australian’, ‘Macedonian’, ‘Macedonia‘, ‘Macedonia and health’ and ‘Macedonia and women’. Searches were kept broad due to the limited amount of published information on Macedonians in Australia. Articles on Macedonians in Macedonia were also reviewed to find further relevant materials for the literature review. Reference lists of retrieved articles were checked to identify additional articles. Some information for the review was derived from reports and data that where collated for the Macedonian Women’s Project meetings (a subcommittee of the South East Health Breast and Cervical Cancer Recruitment Working Party) held prior to the commencement of the Macedonian Women’s Health Project. Also, key community members, generously sharing their time and extensive experience with the Macedonian-Australian community, provided insight into factors influencing the health of women in the St George region through meetings and providing documents that have been included in the review of literature. These meetings were held with representatives from the Macedonian Australian Welfare Association of Sydney (MAWA), Rockdale Mental Health, Bexley Migrant Resource Centre (Home and Community Care services) and St George Youth Network in late 2004 and January 2005. - 3 -
Macedonian Women’s Health Project Review of literature ___________________________________________________________________ Background This section includes some information on the country of Macedonia, its history, patterns of migration to Australia and some aspects of Macedonian culture to provide a broader understanding of the factors that may influence the health and wellbeing of Macedonian women in south eastern Sydney. Macedonia The Republic of Macedonia is located on the Balkan Peninsula in southern Europe. Macedonia is landlocked, surrounded by Serbia in the north, Greece in the south, Bulgaria to the east and Albania in the west. The republic of Macedonia has a population of just over two million people in an area of 67,741 square kilometres. The capital city of Macedonia is Skopje which is in the northern part of country on the Vardar River. Macedonia is a mountainous country with small basins of agricultural land linked to rivers leading to the Aegean Sea. The interior of Macedonia has a moderate continental climate with warm summers and cold wet winters (Macedonian Australian Welfare Association 2004). The official language spoken in Macedonia is Macedonian. The Macedonian alphabet is a distinct alphabet called Cyrillic. The Cyrillic alphabet (with some minor distinctions) is also used in other countries such as Russia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Ukraine, Mongolia and in other central Asian republics. History For much of its history Macedonia has been occupied, divided and dominated at various times by the Roman, Byzantine, Serbian, Bulgarian and Ottoman empires. In the 1912–1913 Balkan Wars, Serbia, Greece, and Bulgaria formed alliances which resulted in Macedonia being discharged from the Turkish rule. Consequentially the victors each annexed parts of Macedonia. In 1944 Vardar Macedonia entered the Yugoslav Federation whereas the southern part (Aegean Macedonia) stayed with Greece. In 1991 when Yugoslav Federation was dissolved, Vardar Macedonia became known as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (Thomas 2001). Following the break up of Yugoslavia, however, the Australian Bureau of Statistics did not provide a separate category for people from Macedonia in the census until 1996; Macedonians were categorised as ‘Yugoslav’ , ‘Greek’ (Macedonian Australian Welfare Association 2004) and ‘Slav’ (Najdovski 1997) thereby underestimating the number of Macedonians in Australia. The Australian government still officially uses the term ‘Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’ in preference to ‘Republic of Macedonia’ as used by Macedonians themselves. In the late1990s Macedonia was faced with an escalation of ethnic conflicts between the Macedonian and the ethnic Albanian population (Copic 2004). The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) failure to disarm and disband the Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army resulted in a major security threat for Macedonia. A full-scale war did - 4 -
Page 1 and 2: Influences on the health and wellbe
Page 3 and 4: Macedonian Women’s Health Project
Page 5: Macedonian Women’s Health Project

A review of literature, 2006 ( pdf - 438 KB) - ARCHI

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?