RAUPUHA Stud’s Russell Proffit with the Suftex ram. PHOTO SUPPLIED
FARMERS raised $2000 for charity by competing for a Suftex ram auctioned at a recent sale at Raupuha Stud, Mahoenui. The money will support Staywell, a free service with volunteers offering health checks at rural events from Fieldays to pet days. Overall well-being is Staywell’s focus. “We check people’s blood pressure, glucose and cholesterol, and then we talk about what they can do to keep themselves mentally well. The two are closely tied together, said Joyce Brown, who started the charity six years ago. “You can’t do one without the other really.” Conversations around sun protection, mammograms, smear tests, prostate cancer checks and binge drinking are also part of Staywell’s work. “It’s time to get people thinking about their own health and wellbeing rather than just ignoring it. Because there’s so much that can be treated if it’s caught early enough,” Joyce said. Joyce started Staywell to combat rural people’s tendency to ignore themselves. “I’ve been farming for 40 years and I knew right at the beginning that people looked after their animals better than themselves. That was the motivation for it,” she said. People who discover health issues through Staywell’s checks are given resources and advice to help them take their next step. “We’ll follow up two or three months later, about 90% of people have actually acted on our advice”, she said. “The GPs love it because they’re people they don’t normally see.” Joyce felt that a key issue for people in the King Country was the distances. “[People here face] isolation from each other and from health services. From the specialised health services. It’s quite a distance to come to Waikato.” Alcohol is an ongoing issue for many in rural areas, she said, especially youth. “Young folk that may be into rugby and they’re actually over drinking at every practice and every game so they’re actually never sober. I think alcohol is right through our community.” Rural GP Dr Fiona Bolden, chair of the Hauora Taiwhenua Rural Health Network, said she supports anything to help identify unmet needs for medical help in the community. “It’s great that there are volunteers that want to do that.” Fiona said services like Staywell cannot send people to the doctor if there is no doctor. “The difficulty is where [the health checks are] happening in areas where there are no health providers.” “There’s been plenty of stuff in the media about what sort of state the rural health workforce is in, nationally, at the moment and we do all need to work together. “We’re very keen to work with communities around solutions for this.” Medical providers needed to get behind community health volunteers, making sure the latter helped people as effectively as possible. “How can we support them to do something which has useful outcomes?” Fiona said it was also important to ensure lifestyle information – to be later delivered by health care providers rather than Staywell volunteers – would fit with rural peoples’ social and economic realities. That meant not telling people to eat fresh salads if most of their food came from the freezer. “So if somebody … only has access to meat, say, for example, for whatever reason. They work on the farm and they can get cheap meat but they have real difficulty accessing other foods, they’ve still got to eat.” The ram sale took place on the Proffit family’s Raupuha Stud in Mahoenui south of Piopio; it is an annual event. Suftex rams are a cross between the Suffolk and Texel sheep breeds. The winning buyer did not wish to be named.
