Talking Health - Territory Q Issue 10
A groundbreaking communication device created in the Northern Territory is being used to combat one of the scourges of the modern world: smoking.
Cancer Council SA is using OneTalk to promote the Quitline and their Aboriginal counsellors in the NT.
OneTalk’s colourful Talking Posters have been placed in health service centres throughout Indigenous communities.
The audio originally set for the posters was three sections of a song developed by CAAMA radio – at the touch of a button, a reggae beat delivers a powerful message: you don’t have to do it on your own, Quitline can help you over the phone.
The posters were so well received that Cancer Council SA developed a second set of posters to deliver information about Quitline to Aboriginal communities with messages translated in various languages.
“These posters have helped us to promote Quitline as a service that is appropriate for Aboriginal people and engage through not only a poster, but one that can interact with the audience,” says Cancer Council’s Tobacco Control Manager Lauren Maksimovic.
Cancer Council SA run the Quitline service to support South Australians and Territorians in their quit smoking attempts.
It also coordinates a program that encourages Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in South Australia and the NT to access the Quitline service for counselling support in their quit smoking journey.
OneTalk is now used in many parts of Australia to deliver messages in many languages through Talking Posters and Talking Books.
For instance, the not-for-profit Networking Health Victoria delivers messages to non-English speaking refugees about immunisation in 22 languages through posters and books.
The books are also in English and have proved useful for visually impaired people and those with low literacy.
Well-illustrated posters and books deliver messages – whether about quitting smoking or how to use an ATM – through a simple, tamper-proof recording device.
The communication tool was developed by Anya Lorimer, who owns Darwin-based Sprout Creative.
She says OneTalk recognises that Indigenous culture is based on the spoken word and that communication with Indigenous people in remote Territory communities is very different from communication with Aboriginal people in Redfern.
“One size doesn’t fit all,” she says.
“OneTalk meets the challenges of poor literacy and numeracy skills, and other custom challenges, such as kin, skin and clan.
“Authorities spend tens of thousands of dollars making a DVD in language to get across a message – say, about drugs or domestic violence.
“But that requires someone to arrange a meeting in each community to show the DVD.
“OneTalk posters can be put up in communities – nailed to a wall, pinned up in a clinic, tied to a star picket. And every time someone presses a button the message is heard by everyone within earshot.
“Government agencies are guaranteed to get their message across regardless of who’s delivering it or where it’s being delivered.”