Gender and health mediators in health communication: A study on the digital stories of women empowering together

Based on the interpersonal level of health communication, this study seeks to answer the questions of whether a gender-sensitive understanding of health communication is possible through health mediators, and if a common empowerment practice among women can be created through intercultural interaction. Health mediation has arisen due to the different understandings on body and the cultural aspect in health experiences and was developed especially for the communication problems that migrants encounter in accessing health services. In this context, digital stories of health mediators created in the digital storytelling workshop on 1-2 November 2018, "Women Empowering Together" are analyzed with respect to the "Strengthening Access to Sexual and Reproductive Health, and Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Services for Syrian and Other Refugees through Women and Girl Safe Spaces (WGSS)/Women and Girl Safe Spaces Project", Hacettepe University Digital Storytelling Unit and Hacettepe University Women's Research and Implementation Center's (HUWRIC) cooperation. While this study approaches health as the physical, mental and social well-being, it also addresses health communication in a holistic way in terms of the access of women migrants to public services, the way they relate to their rights and their own empowerment stories. For this reason, social cohesion, which is a layered aspect, should be accepted as a bilateral process between society and migrants, as it includes the ability of migrants to understand their own autonomous needs and make demands, and on the other hand, the response of the society. When it comes to micro narratives of women migrants, some concepts that are quite controversial in feminist literature, such as motherhood and home, can be positioned differently than macro narratives. In this study, different dimensions of these concepts are tried to be evaluated with the personal experience of migrants and their interactions with other women.