Embrace the change: A successful women’s health promotion event

In mid-May, St Martins Medical Practice held a successful “Embrace the Change” event focusing on women’s health, specifically menopause, perimenopause, and healthy ageing. The event attracted 123 attendees and raised over $350 for local charities, NZ Gifts of Love and Strength and Women’s Centre.

The event included informative presentations from Dr Caroline Christie on perimenopause and menopause symptoms and treatments, Dr Lizzie Loudon on lifestyle management and healthy ageing, and a local women’s health physiotherapist on pelvic floor health. The participation of the audience in the subsequent Q&A session showed just how important this event was in creating a dialogue around women’s health.

Display stands with health promotion materials and multidisciplinary staff were available for one-on-one discussions after the presentations. Many women remained behind to talk to nurses, health improvement practitioners (HIPs), health coaches, physiotherapists and more.

Feedback from attendees was overwhelmingly positive, with the majority rating the event 5/5 for enjoyment and helpfulness and expressing interest in future events on topics like youth mental health, dementia, anxiety, nutrition, diabetes, IBS, and chronic illness management

Dr Loudon noted her key takeaways from this event:

• Patients are keen to engage with health promotion and value information coming from a trusted source such as their general practice.
• Health promotion and encouraging healthy lifestyle behaviours to manage/reverse ill health is joyful medicine. It can be an antidote to burn out.
• An event like this brings the whole team together and we all get the reward of having made a difference.
• Running events like this breaks down barriers for people to engage their health care team. We have had several women come in to see us because of this event.
• People believe that we truly care about their health when we do health promotion work, which is of course true