Yerin Eleanor Duncan Aboriginal Health Centre in Wyong has released its own podcast, Yerin Yarns, aimed at educating listeners on the centre’s services, while also engaging the community.
The second episode, which was released on Friday, August 7, features Chairperson Vickie Parry, who also is the daughter of the first registered Aboriginal nurse in NSW, Eleanor Duncan.
This year marks 25 years of the Yerin organisation providing comprehensive and culturally responsive primary health care to the local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community through the Eleanor Duncan Aboriginal Health Centre on the Central Coast.
The fortnightly podcast, which is co-hosted by Yerin Mental Health workers, Luke Grant and Brett Field, strives to help the community understand the programs that Yerin provides.
Field explained how the podcast started during the COVID-19 lockdown as a way to spread mental health awareness among the community.
“We then branched it out to Yerin Yarns as a podcast to share awareness about Yerin services and what we do,” Field said.
“We are going to be branching out to community members and sportspeople to ask how they have dealt with COVID.
Grant said they also would like the podcasts to be a place where people can share their stories, starting with the team leaders at Yerin.
“We want to tell people’s stories so that these people who are leaders in health can express their story and share what gets them going,” Grant said.
“From a cultural point of view, we have a different way of healing and developing strengths in certain areas, so we are not like your mainstream medical centre, we are more a culturally aware health centre. Yerin Yarns has so far received plenty of positive feedback from the community, and the next episode can be found on Spotify and Apple.
Reporter Jacinta Counihan