November 2018
In February/March 2016, BTAA was successful in being awarded co-funding for a project to develop new brain tumour resource materials including for languages other than English.
In the first year, the Steering Committee and Project Team held meetings and agreed to two possible new resources based on ‘It’s Okay to Ask’ and a pictorial map of the Brain Tumour journey with information for the doctor to complete for each patient. The Team also produced a listing of existing BT resources available in Australia.
In November 2016 the Steering Committee decided to go through an Ethics Committee process to get approval for the conduct of brain tumour patient consultation on the two new resources. Approval was granted in May 2017 by University of Queensland.
In September 2017, six Focus Groups with patients and carers were held in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Dr Danette Langbecker (a Steering Committee member for the project) led the consultations. There was a good response to the call for consultation with patients and carers. Several BTAA Committee members also assisted at the consultations.
In 2018, the project completed the design of the two resources and commenced translation into the following languages:
Arabic
Simplified and Traditional Chinese
Greek
Italian
Vietnamese
Tagalog
Hindi
Punjabi
Dari
Spanish
The translation was undertaken by Polaron, a Melbourne based firm. Polaron also tests its translations with experts in each of the languages to ensure ease of understanding.
The project has also prepared some promotion information for each of the resources which is also available in each language.
The project is now identifying a video involving a high grade glioma patients/carer/family story for translation into the 10 languages. This will involve the development of sub titles in 10 languages and is expected to be completed in the next few months.
The preparation of these two brain tumour patient resources for both English speaking and CALD patients is unique. No other country has provided resources in the same number of languages for its brain tumour patients and so the resources are likely to be frequently read on the internet. It is hoped that the new resources and videos will be widely used across countries to provide SUPPORT to brain tumour patients.
The project will be placing the new materials on the BTAA website in 2019. The new resources will be able to be easily downloaded and printed in whichever language is required. And medical staff will be able to provide brain tumour pathway information in the language of choice for ipatients and their families.
A national launch of the new resources will be held in the first half of 2019.
