All Ireland Traveller Health Study Our Geels - Department of Health ...

All Ireland Traveller Health Study
This study identified specific obstacles, including illiteracy, which leads to difficulties completing forms
for the renewal of medical cards; lack of provision for tracing and transferring the health records of
Travellers who are mobile, which makes referrals and continuity of care more difficult; and prejudice
on the part of the general public and service providers, resulting in Travellers being refused access
(O’Donovan, et al., 1995). It reported that Travellers had generally a low expectation of health services,
and that Travellers had high utilisation rates of a small number of services (specifically Accident and
Emergency Services (A & E) paediatric services and obstetric services) but low usage rates of many
other services, particularly preventative services. Difficulties were experienced by all health boards
in the utilisation and delivery of A & E services; including perceptions of inappropriate use of these
services, non-attendance at follow-up appointments and difficulties arising because Traveller patients
are sometimes accompanied by large family groups. These findings informed important policy
recommendations in the Task Force Report (Report of the Task Force on the Travelling Community,
1995), including the recommendation for self-held patient records that might overcome challenges of
data transfer. The 1995 Task Force placed particular emphasis on the impact which discrimination has
on Traveller health and its relevance to health provision, identifying this discrimination as happening
both at the individual and interpersonal level and at the institutional level.
The 1995 Report of the Task Force on the Travelling Community identified the provision of health
services and in particular, questions associated with access to and utilisation of these services, as being
of major concern to the Traveller community. The main elements of these strategies in health include
the introduction of a number of measures to improve the health status of the Traveller community and
to remove the obstacles to Traveller access to health services. They also acknowledged the relationship
between health and accommodation and the need to facilitate the participation of Travellers in
the planning of health services through the establishment of the National Traveller Health Advisory
Committee and the establishment of regional THUs. Figure 4 describes the committees and structures
established and/or revised subsequent to the publication of the 1995 Task Force Report (Report of the
Task Force on the Travelling Community, 1995).
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