The Multicultural Health Blind Spot

By Tina La, Policy and Program Officer

When funding rounds open in the multicultural health sector, competitive processes can create an unintended pattern.  

The more established and well-resourced organisations are often best positioned to succeed, while smaller organisations, often connected to harder-to-reach communities, remain under-resourced.  

This doesn’t mean smaller or emerging organisations lack capability, expertise or impact. Often, these organisations hold some of the strongest connections to communities, but have had fewer opportunities to build the systems, experience and evidence needed to compete in heavily competitive funding environments.  

Being a successful grant applicant often requires two things: the resources to develop a strong application, and a track record of delivering similar programs. For organisations that have fewer opportunities to access funding, this can create a challenging cycle.  

Without access to funding, these organisations have fewer opportunities to build their capacity, and without that capacity, they can struggle to secure future funding. Over time, this can create a blind spot, where many organisations contributing to health equity for multicultural communities aren’t visible within funding systems.  

Across multicultural communities, grassroots organisations and smaller community-based non-profits play a critical role in improving health equity for our multicultural communities. They are often trusted points of contact for communities who may experience barriers accessing mainstream health services due to language, cultural barriers, stigma, migration experiences, or familiarity with Australia’s health system.   

These organisations hold valuable community knowledge, understand local priorities and often provide some of the strongest pathways for communities to engage with health information. Investing in strengthening their capacity is therefore an investment in health equity.  

When these organisations are excluded from funding opportunities, the impact extends beyond the organisations themselves. Communities can miss opportunities to shape the programs designed for them, while the health system misses valuable insights from the people and organisations closest to community experiences about what works, what barriers exist, and where support is most needed.  

Over time, this can also affect trust and participation. If organisations with strong community relationships do not see pathways to involvement, opportunities to strengthen collaboration between communities and the health system can be lost.  

This is why creating a more equitable health system requires more than continuing to fund organisations that are already best positioned for success. We need greater investment in the broader ecosystem of multicultural organisations and their ability to participate in shaping a more equitable health system.  

During the assessment of applicants for a grants stream delivered by the Collaborative is running, we were struck by the number of highly committed organisations that exist across the sector. While we were able to support several organisations through the primary grants stream, the number of highly capable organisations that remained demonstrated that there was a broader opportunity to invest in sector capability.  

This became the rationale behind our upcoming Microgrants program - a complementary program alongside our Community Capacity Building Grants Program primary grants stream. The program recognises that building a more equitable health system requires investing not only in projects, but in the organisations and communities that make those projects possible. 

It is built on the principle that organisations should not need to already have significant capacity before they can access the support needed to build it.   

With support from the Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, the Collaborative is able to invest in building the long-term capability of multicultural organisations, alongside funding community-led initiatives that strengthen health equity across Australia. 

Through structured learning, targeted modules and smaller-scale grant opportunities, organisations will have the opportunity to strengthen their skills, systems and confidence while delivering work grounded in the needs of their communities.    

Through this investment, we hope to see more organisations equipped to participate in future funding opportunities, engage in health system reform and advocate effectively for the communities they represent.   

Ultimately, strengthening multicultural health equity requires supporting multicultural communities to shape the policies, services and systems that impact their day-to-day lives.   

A funding system can run for years, rewarding what is most visible and measurable, while still missing the communities and organisations that have had fewer opportunities to be seen.  

Gaps in health equity do not always appear in the data. Sometimes, they appear in the communities that were never reached, the voices that were never heard and the partnerships that were never formed.  

For the Collaborative, our Microgrant programs is the first step towards addressing this blind spot and ensuring more organisations and more communities can contribute to a more equitable health system.  

Tina La is the Collaborative’s Policy and Program Officer. She brings an evidence-based analytical approach and a commitment to improving wellbeing and equity for diverse and underrepresented groups through leveraging her research-informed experience alongside community-led collaboration.