Oral Presentation (max 20 mins) National Suicide Prevention Conference 2025

Background:

Culturally and lingustically diverse communities in Australia have been identified as priority groups for developing suicide prevention practice and research¹, there is a lack of programs developed to meet the unique mental health and suicide prevention needs of many cultural groups². The challenges in accessing appropriate mental health and suicide prevention care for Māori and Pasifika people in Australia specifically have been identified including culturally unsafe care and service mistrust³.

The Side-By-Side program:

The Side-By-Side program was designed to address the suicide prevention and mental health service disparities experienced by Pasifika and Māori people in Australia. This initiative was co-designed and delivered by a consortium of five Pasifika community organisations within Logan city.

The two phases of the program approach were:

(1) Identifying and training grassroots community champions and gatekeepers to raise awareness, deliver mental health promotion and support referral pathways

(2) Delivering holistic and strengths-based mental health promotion programs which were co-designed from culturally-consistent understandings of mental wellbeing

Program outcomes:

The partner organisations represented a range of services and segments of the community including churches, gyms, charities, men’s and sports clubs and a private psychology clinic. As such, the partners and gatekeepers were able to utilise the existing connections with community members already engaged with these organisation in order to reach people across the local community, particularly those unlikely to engage with health services.

Since commencing the initiative in May 2024, over 65 holistic mental health awareness and training sessions have been delivered to almost 2000 Pasifika and Māori people in the Logan community.

Session description:

This presentation will describe the development and implementation of the Side-By-Side suicide prevention program. The session will outline the key actions taken to co-design programs consistent with Pasifika values and understandings of mental wellbeing that utilise cultural and community strengths. The key learnings, challenges and applications for other Pasifika community and CALD suicide prevention initiatives will also be discussed.