RIMA stands for Refugee, Internally displaced person, Migrant and Asylum seeker.

RIMA communities often find it hard to access health and wellbeing services because of difficulties such as language barriers, cultural misunderstandings, lack of information or transport and housing issues.

Our RIMA Wellbeing programme sits under Connecting Communities team and works in conjunction with Te Whatu Ora - MidCentral and Ora Konnect. The programme helps to develop better communication and connection between service providers and MidCentral RIMA communities to bring about better health outcomes. It does this by identifying current and potential barriers to access and working to develop solutions to those barriers.

RIMA Health Coaching

Our RIMA Health Coach is available to support our former refugee community by:

• providing support for people to manage their conditions
• bridging the gap between people and their doctors (particularly language barriers)
• helping people find their way around the healthcare system (NZ health literacy)
• connecting people to external community services as per their needs
• offering people emotional support, and
• being a person's ongoing contact if they have any questions.

You can contact our team on 021 1949 343 or email Indra.Dulal@thinkhauora.nz.

You can find out more about our RIMA Wellbeing Programme and a wide range of health topics by listening to episodes from the RIMA Podcast.

"We may have different hair colour or skin colour, speak different languages or eat different food, but we all share the same heart and mind, and none can exist without the other. RIMA are you and I."