GPs take out top prize at Telstra Business Awards

When Dr Naba Alfayadh fell pregnant in 2020, her world changed in more ways than one.
 
While the Melbourne GP registrar had access to all the healthcare resources she needed, she realised that for those whose primary language is Arabic, they lacked access to safe, evidence-based information.
 
It was then she founded Rahma Health – an organisation creating resources for Arabic-speaking families, addressing pregnancy, childbirth, mental health, parenting, and family wellbeing.
 
It has also created one of the world’s first comprehensive resources on Love in Parenting, addressing a need in communities healing from displacement, war, and intergenerational trauma.
 
Since that day five years ago, Rahma Health’s resources have now been accessed more than three million times, reaching families from Sydney to Baghdad, Dubai to Dublin.
 
And last month, Rahma Health was named Overall Business of the Year 2025 at the Telstra Best of Business Awards.
 
‘It’s such a phenomenal milestone – I’m so proud of the whole team and I think it was beyond our wildest expectations,’ Dr Alfayadh told newsGP.
 
‘It highlights the critical need for the work and the huge gap that existed before Rahma Health.’
 
For its win, Rahma Health was selected from 20,000 applicants, taking part in a nine-month evaluation process.
 
As well as taking home the top prize, it also won the National Best of Business Award for Championing Health, and the National Best of Business Award in Accelerating Women.
 
Dr Mariam Hassan, a GP and a Rahma Health founding Board Director, said these wins show what an impact the resources are having – something she sees firsthand when working in clinic.
 
‘At the moment I’m working at a clinic in Dandenong, and I’ve also been doing a lot of work with Palestinian refugees who recently arrived from Gaza and I’m helping link them in with health services,’ she told newsGP.
 
‘Working with those communities, you realise how difficult it is with the language barriers and even just navigating the healthcare system and the difference in health literacy is huge.’
 
Dr Hassan said working on a project to help lessen that gap and to empower families with education to make their own informed decisions about their healthcare is a privilege.
 
‘Something I’ve realised along this journey is how much I’ve taken it for granted,’ she said.
 
‘Even just realising the lack of resources – trying to print out an information sheet and realising that hardly anything is translated and trying to convey the information to make sure the patients actually understand what I’m telling them.
 
‘But then when you come around the other end and you’re able to educate them, and explain the situation, and see that they’re all up to date with their screenings – that’s a beautiful thing.
 
‘They go and tell their family, and their sisters, and their mums, and it’s a beautiful flow-on effect.’
 
All Rahma Health’s resources are codesigned with the community it serves, supported by 70 volunteers, 50 global partner organisations, and a long list of GPs, including Dr Azhar Al-Sadii, Dr Sama Hadad, Dr Ibtihal Altawil, Dr Alisha Rawal, and others.
 
The team is also staffed exclusively by people with lived experience as refugees and migrants, ensuring authentic understanding of the communities they serve.
 
‘This year, our strategic priority was to create the world’s first Arabic antenatal video series, and honestly so much of it was informed by our work in clinic, in person, seeing women for antenatal care,’ Dr Alfayadh said.
 
‘We saw the lack of information, the fear, the anxiety, but also the potential of these families to lead community healing.’
 
Those videos have now been seen around the world – by those in refugee camps in Jordan, Syrian families in Turkey, and women in rural Yemen.
 
And there is no doubt the impact Rahma Health’s resources are already having.
 
‘I was exposed to physical family violence in the past. When I read the Rahma articles, I could recognise psychological, financial, and religious violence – it increased my awareness to protect myself and my kids,’ said one 44-year-old woman and Iraqi refugee.
 
‘I recently started to follow the Rahma advice about parenting support, especially the eye contact and the unconditional love,’ said a 36-year-old man from Palestine.
 
‘The connection between me and my kids is much stronger and they are much happier now.’
 
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