Bangladeshi community health profile

Bangladeshi community engagement

Bangladesh Women’s Association BWA logo, Round logo with drawn images of 3 women at the centre. 

From August 2022 to August 2023 Birmingham Public Health partnered with Bangladesh Women’s Association (BWA) to share the findings from the Bangladeshi community health profile and co-produce solutions to tackle identified health inequalities.

The project from Bangladesh Women’s Association focused on the following key areas:

Physical activity

BWA set up a series of exercise classes delivered by a bi-lingual exercise instructor, including yoga, pilates and Zumba.

From initial feedback, 100% of the women engaged at BWA had not exercised before coming to BWA. Therefore, this was the group’s first exposure to the group activity with a professional instructor.

This project increased the confidence levels of the participants and led to them being socially empowered. In February 2023 the women’s group performed an exercise routine in front of the NHS Chief Executive Officer, Amanda Pritchard, and an audience of 200 conference members at the Royal Institution in London.

5 women also received personal development training to become ‘community walk leaders’. They then started a ‘walking bees’ group which regularly met in Small Heath park for group walks. The group was keen to improve their physical and mental health and continue their social interaction.

Health awareness workshops

There was a series of health awareness workshops, run in a women’s only environment to enable open communication surrounding health issues and increased interconnectedness. The workshops ran twice a week for 2-hour sessions over a course of 8 weeks. The workshops covered a variety of topics, including:

  • dementia
  • mindfulness
  • managing Stress
  • diet and Nutrition
  • diabetes
  • menopause
  • breast and cervical cancer screening
  • maternal outcomes

The workshops were primarily tailored towards women with long-term health conditions, to provide a structures and holistic approach to self-management of health and wellbeing.

Diet and nutrition

BWA provided nutritional knowledge for pregnant mothers and other women to enable participants to adopt healthy food habits for themselves and for their family members. This included encouraging the women to keep a food diary.

Engagement partner information

Organisation: Bangladesh Women’s Association

Key project representatives: Amina Chowdhury

Email: bwaamina@yahoo.co.uk

Page last updated: 9 April 2024 

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