New campaign empowers South Asian families to take action against diabetes

Surrey: Cities Changing Diabetes and Dunya Media are disrupting public health communications with today’s launch of Mithaas.org, a new online destination that creates entertaining, educational, and culturally relevant digital content to connect South Asian families in BC and Ontario with conversation-starters about health and wellness. It all kicks off with a ground-breaking public service announcement that features South Asian seniors in a slick, high-energy sports-style ad. The PSA re-frames how an underserved community thinks about their health by focusing on a simple message: the immigrant experience you’ve been through is way tougher than the experience of reducing your sugar. South Asians are 3x more likely to have diabetes than the average Canadian, with nearly half of all cases going undiagnosed. It affects over 35,000 South Asians in the Fraser Valley alone. “It’s not for lack of awareness,” says Kashif Pasta, Creative Director at Dunya. “South Asians know it’s a problem, but diabetes often feels inevitable when people don’t know what to do about it. When the foods and products that support the growth of diabetes are associated with positivity and fun, and prevention and management of diabetes is reduced to statistics and shame, the average person chooses to just... not think about it.”

Mithaas aims to make conversations about health more positive and accessible to a community lacking in culturally-relevant information. With videos, a narrative short film, shareable graphics, and offline events in Vancouver, Surrey and Brampton, Ontario, the Mithaas campaign is a simple, focused, positive, and fun approach to health and wellness that doesn’t get caught up in fatalism or negativity.

The campaign makes use of popular digital platforms in entirely new ways, like a Whatsapp number that people can subscribe to for weekly tips and videos straight to their phone.

“With each of our platforms, we’re meeting people where they already are, instead of asking them to come to us. South Asian seniors are incredibly active on Whatsapp and their adult children are more active on Instagram. Our parents and grandparents have done and sacrificed so much– they’re heroes and diabetes shouldn’t be what ultimately holds them back,” Pasta said. Dunya hopes that this more positive, relevant way to talk about health can become a model that is replicated across the country.

“We just want everyone to live their best lives,” said Pasta.