Health Information

The second step on our spiral is about Access to Services.
For us this includes improving local people’s knowledge of the services they are entitled to, and health professionals’ awareness of local needs.

The projects under this theme are all about exchanging information between the local community and health professionals.
To download an evaluation on the work of health guides, carried out by the University of Central Lancashire, please click here.

To download a leaflet on the work of health guides, please click here.







The Health Guides Project trains and supports local people to act as own-language health guides within their communities. The aim is to provide excluded people with information and guidance on positive health and how to access health services. The health guides also act as representatives, bringing issues of concern to policy makers.

The Hackney Mental Health Guides Project aims to provide information and guidance on overall positive health for local people with mental health problems. We will soon be launching a similar project in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

There are currently 70 active Health Guides within SAfH. They are not volunteers, but paid sessional workers. For many this is the first step towards a career in health related or community development work. In this way we not only provide an important interface for the exchange of information, but we also help to raise the economic profile of our local communities.


The Tower Hamlets Sickle Cell and Thalassaemia Screening Project, which works with local Bengali and Somali communities uses specially trained health guides to provide mother tongue sessions on these conditions and the benefits of early screening in community centres, youth centres, colleges and mosques. Read more about this project here.

Health guides are also going to contribute towards our Hospice Community Engagement Project. This project encompasses all aspects of the SAfH spiral and provides an exiting opportunity for us to reach all the way from the grass roots level to influencing policy and changing practise.

“We train frontline workers to lead groups in their own communities, for example informing people about cancer and cancer services. Communication between GPs and community members is a major barrier. People just don’t get taken seriously. We tell them to actually use the word ‘cancer’. Then at least they stand a chance of being investigated properly.”  Nirban Chowdhury, Project Manager

For more information please contact Pauline Facey at paulinef@safh.org.uk