Rural Health Week a success (From The Northern Echo)

Rural Health Week a success

3:03pm Monday 5th October 2009 in NHS Darlington and County Durham

An event organised to help rural communities in County Durham stay healthy has been a resounding success.

Rural Health Week, from 26 September to 3 October focused on access to services for the vulnerable and hard to reach in rural areas. A range of partner organisations teamed up to offer a series of events to help rural communities across County Durham stay healthy, including: • Free health checks at two of the County’s biggest livestock auctions to encourage farmers to consider their health • Healthy eating cookery classes • Awareness raising by community paramedics • Advice on complementary therapies.

Community paramedics and nurses offered free blood pressure and blood sugar tests at St John’s Chapel Auction Mart and staff from Bishop Auckland General Hospital were also on hand to offer free diabetes checks. A similar event was held at Middleton-in-Teesdale Auction Mart, offering respiratory checks. Both screening events were a resounding success, with 95 people screened from across the area. Some of those screened were found to have potentially high blood sugar readings, blood pressure or both and have been referred to their GP for further consultation.

Rural Health Week also featured a number of ‘Hands on Health’ cookery courses, provided by Durham Rural Community Council, targeted at different groups. Sessions were held specifically for young people of different age groups, as well as sessions for the over 60s. Staff from Darlington MIND’s rural health project also offered complementary therapies. Diane Spark, from Upper Teesdale Agricultural Support Services, said: "UTASS are impressed with how the provision of health checks at auction marts in other parts of the country are benefiting high numbers of farmers and as part of Rural Health Week we were delighted to support the provision of something similar in some of the auction marts in the Durham Dales".

Yasmin Chaudhry, Chief Executive of NHS County Durham, said: “County Durham has a large rural population and a significant amount of effort has been put into identifying ways of ensuring that the views of those living in rural areas are taken account of.

“The events planned as part of Rural Health Week helped us to raise awareness of some important issues, provide us with an opportunity to pilot new ways of working and allowed us to demonstrate we are responsive to what local people are telling us about the day-to-day issues they face living in a rural area.”

The events were a partnership between NHS County Durham, County Durham and Darlington Community Health Services, County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, North East Ambulance Service, Upper Teesdale Agricultural Support Services, Durham Rural Community Council, Darlington MIND, SureStart Teesdale, Teesdale Village Halls Consortium, Teesdale Day Clubs, local GP practices and Age Concern Durham County.

ENDS Note to editors Rural Health Week is an annual event run for the Institute of Rural Health. This year’s theme was ‘Reaching Out: Enabling access to services for the vulnerable and hard to reach in rural areas.’ The aim of the week was to raise the profile of rural health issues locally, regionally and nationally. The Institute and the Forum run a number of national events and target the national press to raise awareness of rural health issues. Since 2002 other agencies and organisations have joined in with events in their own localities.

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