Helping people eat better means education about what’s really in the foods they are eating. Hauora Taranaki PHO has developed an educational DVD that tours a supermarket and provides a guide to understanding food labelling and healthier food options.
 
“People should eat diets consisting of nutritional foods that are low in fat, salt and sugar, and high in fibre,” says Sarah MacAvoy, the new dietician at Hauora Taranaki.

“When reading food labels remember the 10:10:6 rule: less than 10gm sugar, less than 10 grams fat and more than 6 grams fibre,” says Sarah. “A healthy diet should also include eating more fruit and vegetables”

The DVD was developed as a tool to assist in reducing obesity, diabetes and cancers that are caused though poor diet. The food labelling information helps people to purchase the healthiest and cheapest food options by looking at energy a food provides, protein content, total and saturated fats, carbohydrates, sugars, dietary fibre and sodium. The DVD also shows people how to understand date marking, storage requirements, the list of ingredients list and nutritional information on the pack.

The DVD covers a range of useful information enabling people to:
• Shop for quick and healthy meals on a budget
• Extend meat meals with vegetables
• Look for cheaper meat options
• Find seasonal, frozen and tinned vegetable options
• Reduce waste of vegetables
• Determine portion sizes

You can download the two video’s and a promotional audio file from the media library.

For more information about this project or to get a copy of the DVD, contact Barbara Purdie

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in New Zealand where approximately one person dies every 90 minutes as a result of heart disease.  This accounts for 40% of all deaths annually and approximately 10,500 people.  Thankfully, most heart attacks and strokes are preventable if the disease is identified and remedial steps taken.  Identifying CVD is a primary focus of Hauora Taranaki and we offer CVD checks through our GP practices to at risk populations i.e. Male over 45 years (Maori men over 35 years) Female over 55 years (Maori women over 45 years).
 
Cardiovascular risk assessment programmes ascertain the person's risk of having a heart attack in the next five years.  Hauora Taranaki has worked closely with its practices to implement the new software to make this easier and the results to date have been impressive.  
 
Don't forget to ask your general practice team about how you can get your heart health check done!

For more information contact Barbara Purdie

With 18 practices seeing thousands of patients each year, Hauora Taranaki has initiated a significant drive to confirm the quality of care provided to patients. Called CORNERSTONE™, this quality improvement programme takes a holistic approach for the whole practice to self assess, analyse gaps and take action to identify and manage criteria that pose risk to staff and patients.
This assessment tool is recommended by the Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners, and enables practices within the Hauora Taranaki PHO network to validate the quality of their care and internal practices.

For more information contact Rosemary Ireland

Bed wetting can be an extremely embarrassing and frustrating issue for children, but there is hope!  A new training programme has been introduced by Hauora Taranaki to assist parents and children manage bed wetting in children who haven't developed bladder control.  This condition is referred to as urinary incontinence or enuresis.

Generally speaking, girls develop bladder control before boys do. By the age of 5, 15% of children are wet at night.  This percentage drops to around 5% by the age of 10, and 1% by the age of 15.  To help children overcome this problem, Hauora Taranaki has developed a training programme and resource kit that includes a bed wetting alarm to detect moisture, waking the child so they can go to the toilet normally.  To find out more please ask at you GP or contact us.

For more information contact Rosemary Ireland

In 2004 Hauora Taranaki identified the need to develop strategies to improve the health of the Taranaki community in terms of early detection and treatment of patients with diabetes or at risk of developing the disease.  This led to the testing of patients to identify glucose tolerance, impaired fasting glycaemia and gestational diabetes (diabetes during pregnancy).  People at risk are then offered free services to improve lifestyle choices and receive treatment on a regular basis with the aim of slowing diabetes and associated cardiovascular and renal complications.
 
A review of data collected for the 12 month period to June 30th 2008 showed a total of 173 newly diagnosed diabetes patients (up from 126 in the previous year), and 434 at risk of diabetes diagnosis (up from 197 in the previous year).  A further 388 patients received an assessment of high risk factors for heart disease and strokes and were given life style advice to reduce the onset of diabetes.
 
The Ministry of Health commented that the Hauora Taranaki review was amongst the best in the country.
 
As a way of continuing the momentum to identify patients at risk of diabetes, the clinical team at Hauora Taranaki actively supports the education and training of practice nurses in all areas of diabetes and goes further to include the management of chronic conditions and cardiovascular disease through its TRIUMPH programme that includes Care Plus.

For more information contact Rosemary Ireland

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