Connecting the Dots: How a Community of Practice Breaks Down Silos

By Deva Wismartia, Program Manager

At a Community of Practice meeting in September, one of our community partners shared a challenge they’d been encountering while delivering the National Cervical Screening Program (NCSP). Women were learning about cervical screening self-collection, only to be told by their GP that their clinic didn’t offer it. 

Another partner, working in a different state with a different community, immediately recognised the problem. They had been experiencing the same thing. 

Until that conversation, both organisations had been navigating the issue on their own. Now, for the first time, they were comparing experiences and finding a common solution. 

Luckily, there was someone else in the room who could help. The Australian Centre for the Prevention of Cervical Cancer (ACPCC), our Clinical Partner, offered to run online education sessions for clinics that want help to offer self-collection. 

An ongoing problem that had been playing out across different communities and health systems had suddenly become a shared challenge, with an opportunity for a shared solution. No single organisation sees the whole story. The community organisation sees women who leave a session ready to act. The clinic sees a patient asking for something unfamiliar. The funder sees a gap between the number of people reached and the number of tests completed. Each sees one part of the picture, but the gap persists because no one can see the whole thing. 

The Australian Multicultural Health Collaborative delivers the NCSP with funding from the Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing. We work with community partners across several states and territories, most of whom also helped deliver the first phase of the program under the Own It campaign. 

Since September, these partners have been meeting every six weeks in Community of Practice sessions, alongside ACPCC. The idea is simple: create a regular forum to share what is working, raise challenges, and learn from approaches being tested in other communities. 

The value isn’t limited to identifying bigger, systemic issues. Some of the most useful exchanges happen in response to practical questions.  

One partner asked whether people could take a test home and return it to their GP, which is a common question in the communities they work with. ACPCC explained that this depends on the ordering clinician and laboratory process.  

Another partner shared an opportunity to offer testing at a large weekend gathering that draws thousands of women. Now, we’re exploring how to bring this idea to life in partnership with clinical and healthcare providers.  

A third partner asked about translated resources for a new language group, and ACPCC were able to point them towards existing how-to resource in 25 languages, with the potential to expand further. In each case, a question from a community organisation met an answer from another part of the system, all within the same meeting. 

These examples show what a Community of Practice offers health promotion and access to health support services.  

Effective health promotion is dependent on trust, and trust depends on whether the information people are hearing in their communities matches the information they find at a clinic. Community partners can see where that breaks down, clinical partners can explain why practices differ, and the program team can take these insights to Government while the program is still running. Questions that would otherwise wait for an evaluation report can be raised and answered during delivery. 

The lessons here extend well beyond the NCSP. For anyone who designs, funds or delivers health promotion for multicultural communities can build in a space where community, clinical and policy partners can work together before problems reach a final report. 

Creating a regular space for community, clinical and program partners to come together can help surface challenges and turn local insights into practical improvements that benefit communities. 

A community session can start the conversation about screening. But making sure someone can act on that conversation takes a system that works together.