Health Policy and Equity, York University, HNES Building, 4700 Keele St., Toronto, ON, M3J 1P3, Canada.
York University Centre for Aging Research & Education, Toronto, ON, Canada.
J Community Health. 2017 Dec;42(6):1148-1155. doi: 10.1007/s10900-017-0364-1.
Volunteers and voluntary organizations can connect preventative health care programs to communities and may play an important role in addressing the health needs of older adults. Despite this, tensions may exist in the structures that drive volunteers and voluntary organizations representing immigrant communities to provide unpaid labour to augment and supplement health care services. Furthermore, organizational challenges may exist for community agencies relying on volunteers to sustain a health screening and education program. The intervention program was led by one voluntary agency specifically for South Asian communities in partnership with the university and five local organizations. This paper draws on volunteer surveys (n = 22) and key informant interviews (n = 12) to detail volunteer experiences providing this intervention. Volunteers were university students and other community volunteers. A total of 810 adults participated in the intervention within the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario, Canada between October 2014 and June 2016. We found that volunteers often used their experience as a 'stepping stone' position to other education or work. They also gained from the knowledge and used it to educate themselves and their family members and friends. This paper provides a critical reflection on the role of volunteers in a preventative and educational healthcare intervention program for older adults from the South Asian community. Tensions exist when relying on volunteer labour for the implementation of preventative community health care programming and must be explored to ensure program sustainability as well as equity within the health care system.
志愿者和志愿组织可以将预防保健计划与社区联系起来，并可能在满足老年人的健康需求方面发挥重要作用。尽管如此，在推动代表移民社区的志愿者和志愿组织提供无偿劳动以补充和补充医疗服务的结构中，可能存在紧张关系。此外，依靠志愿者来维持健康筛查和教育计划的社区机构可能存在组织挑战。该干预计划由一家专门为南亚社区服务的志愿机构与大学和五家当地组织合作开展。本文通过志愿者调查（n=22）和关键知情人访谈（n=12）详细介绍了志愿者提供这种干预措施的经验。志愿者是大学生和其他社区志愿者。2014 年 10 月至 2016 年 6 月期间，共有 810 名成年人在安大略省大多伦多地区参加了这项干预措施。我们发现，志愿者经常将自己的经验作为“踏脚石”，以获得其他教育或工作机会。他们还从知识中受益，并将其用于教育自己和家人朋友。本文对志愿者在南亚社区老年人预防和教育性医疗保健干预计划中的作用进行了批判性反思。在依靠志愿者劳动实施预防社区保健计划时，存在紧张关系，必须加以探讨，以确保计划的可持续性以及医疗保健系统内的公平性。
