December 2025 Newsletter
December 4, 2025
Open Consultation: AI Clinical Guidance for CALD Populations
The Migrant and Refugee Health Partnership (MRHP), with The Social Policy Group, is developing a national clinical guidance resource to support the safe, equitable and culturally responsive use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in healthcare. As AI tools become more common in clinical settings - from translation tools to digital scribes and decision-support systems - there is an urgent need to understand how these technologies impact culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD), migrant, and refugee-like communities. This work aims to ensure that Australia’s transition into AI-enabled care strengthens, rather than widens, health equity.
This guidance will focus on the practical realities of clinical use: how AI systems affect communication, cultural safety, trust, consent, health literacy, and the everyday interactions that shape care for CALD patients. It does not aim to revisit national ethics frameworks or technology regulation. Instead, it will produce clear, simple, clinician-friendly guidance geared toward real-world situations that frontline health workers face when AI is involved.
The public consultation phase is now open. We invite contributions from clinicians, community workers, researchers, consumers, multicultural organisations, and anyone with lived experience or professional insight into AI and multicultural healthcare. Your input will help shape the nature and content of this national guidance.
You can contribute by completing our short survey, which will take approximately 10 minutes.
The survey will remain open until 31 January 2026.
Healthy and Safe Pregnancy Information Project
The Social Policy Group has been engaged by the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing to support the needs of migrant and refugee women and their families with accessible and tailored healthy pregnancy information. Through co-design and consultation, The Social Policy Group has created resources to help enhance health outcomes, reduce health disparities, and increase awareness and understanding of stillbirth prevention.
The suite of free, downloadable resources include multilingual animations and social media tiles to share among communities, available on the Healthy Horizons website. They also feature conversation guides on navigating difficult topics around pregnancy for community leaders and settlement service providers. A summary of all the resources and their respective languages can be found in the Stakeholder Kit.
In our final phase of this project, we are partnering with community leaders and organisations to deliver workshops to facilitate open conversation about healthy pregnancy advice and to help answer common healthcare questions. More information will be shared on this soon.
For any questions about the resources or upcoming initiatives you can contact project lead, Marta Jasińska via marta.jasinska@socialpolicy.org.au.
SPG Annual Report 2024–25: Advancing Multicultural Health and Equity
The Social Policy Group, Australia’s Multicultural Health Peak Body and convener of the MRHP, has released its 2024–25 Annual Report, highlighting a year of collaboration, evidence-informed initiatives, and system-level impact.
The report showcases The Social Policy Group's work in improving access to healthcare for migrant and refugee communities and strengthening cultural responsiveness across Australia’s health system.
Through partnerships with government, health professionals, and community organisations, The Social Policy Group continues to bridge policy and practice to ensure health equity for all communities.
Key Multicultural Health Highlights
- The Enhanced Communications for CALD Communities Campaign reached more than 83,000 people, and delivered accessible multilingual cancer-screening information across 20 languages.
- Delivered the Stillbirth Prevention Project, which included co-designed culturally safe education resources with community and clinical partners.
- Developed AI Clinical Guidance for CALD Populations in partnership with the Department of Health and Aged Care, addressing equitable integration of AI in healthcare.
- Worked with the MRHP Council to strengthen system-wide approaches to language access and cultural safety in primary and public health.
- Collaborated across sectors, including settlement, justice and digital inclusion to ensure health communication and services reflect the diversity of Australia’s population.
The Annual Report highlights the collective impact of partnerships that make healthcare more inclusive, trusted and accessible.
The Social Policy Group's role as the Multicultural Health Peak Body continues to drive collaboration between government, practitioners and communities to embed equity in health systems and policy.
Multilingual Medicare and Individual Healthcare Identifier Information
New Translated Audio About Medicare Held Payments
Services Australia has recently developed a new translated audio to encourage customers to update their bank details for Services Australia to pay any outstanding Medicare benefits. The resource is available in 16 languages: Arabic, Assyrian, Chaldean, Cantonese, Mandarin, Dari, Greek, Hindi, Italian, Khmer, Korean, Persian (Farsi), Punjabi, Spanish, Tagalog and Vietnamese.
You can find this audio at servicesaustralia.gov.au/medicare-held-payments-translation webpage or search QC 83134.
Translated Request an Individual Healthcare Identifier Form
The Request an Individual Healthcare Identifier (MS003) form is available in 12 languages. This form has been developed for people who are not eligible for Medicare or a Department of Veterans’ Affairs benefit to request a number to identify them for health care purposes. People with an existing Individual Healthcare Identifier can also use the form to change their personal details.
This form can be accessed at servicesaustralia.gov.au/request-individual-healthcare-identifier-form-translation webpage or search QC 54069.
You can also go to the webpage to search QC 25811 and select the language.
New Pregnancy Information Resources
The Australian Government has developed a series of resources for consumers based on the Australian Pregnancy Care Guidelines. The evidence-based clinical guidelines for health professionals reflect the latest research in pregnancy care and are regularly updated and intended for midwives, GPs, obstetricians and other healthcare providers.
The Pregnancy Information Resources were developed through iterative consultation with stakeholders including The Social Policy Group in its role as Multicultural Health Peak Body. They help explain the care patients should receive during pregnancy and to assist with informed decision making. They include pregnancy information, checklists, and useful questions to ask healthcare providers.
Download the resources below:
- Overview of Pregnancy Resources Brochure: LINK
- Types of Pregnancy Care Factsheet: LINK
- Pregnancy Timeline Factsheet: LINK
- Health Tests During Your Pregnancy Factsheet: LINK
- Common Conditions During Pregnancy Factsheet: LINK
- Promoting the Pregnancy Resources Poster: LINK
Red Nose - Healing After Miscarriage Project
Red Nose Australia is delivering the Healing After Miscarriage Project, aimed at improving culturally safe, compassionate care for families experiencing early pregnancy loss.
As part of this project, Red Nose is undertaking a national co-design process to improve care for families across Australia impacted by miscarriage and early pregnancy loss. They are inviting individuals with lived experience, particularly from First Nations, multicultural, refugee, migrant, rural and remote, and young parent communities, to share their stories.
Contributors will help shape:
• Training for health professionals
• Culturally safe bereavement resources
• Stronger referral pathways
Contributions and stories will remain confidential, de-identified if requested, and treated with care and respect. For more information or to fill out the survey, please go to the Red Nose website.
If any of the content shared in our newsletter has raised any emotions, you can reach out to the Red Nose 24/7 Support Line on 1300 308 307, or the Beyond Blue 24/7 Support Service on 1300 22 4636 to talk to a counsellor.