As part of work to address rural health inequalities in North Cumbria free health checks and healthcare information have been provided at local events this year supported by Primary Care Services North Cumbria, local GP Practices and integrated care teams all working in collaboration to benefit the local population.
In March Primary Care Services North Cumbria worked with local practice staff to offer health checks at the 2 day Rickerby Spring Show in Carlisle. Colleagues from partner organisations also joined with primary care teams during the annual show to ensure that farming communities were not only offered this important opportunity to check their health, but also to raise awareness of mental health and the importance of cancer screening.
Sam Gargett, Project Manager for Primary Care Services North Cumbria said: “It was fantastic to be invited to the show by Rickerby Ltd to provide this important opportunity to target agriculture and rural communities as part of our outreach health prevention work. We’re working in conjunction with our GP practices to make this happen and it’s part of our project to lift work out of the practices and ensure a team is available to attend events such as this, to represent the practices and further support our local rural communities. Our health teams reported back that around 40% of people tested were given some health advice and a small number of people were advised to follow up with their local health teams urgently for further assessment, potentially preventing further health issues with these preventative checks. We’re really happy with how many visitors of the show benefitted from these important checks.”
In July health checks also took place in Wigton at Hopes Auction Mart which was part of a local Community Safety and Rural Crime event. Health teams from Kewsick and Solway Primary Care Network (PCN) were in attendance which included staff from Wigton Surgery, the Your Health Matters Team, The Wellbeing Service and the Weight Management team from Wigton Hospital. Primary Care Services North Cumbria were invited to provide support with the comms.
Catherine Penrice, PCN Operations Manager for Keswick and Solway said: "We're here to promote primary care and our Integrated Care Communities work and trying to reach out to our farming communities. We really struggle to get in touch with these groups on a normal day-to-day basis, as they're really busy and out in rural locations. We are all interconnected teams and this event helps to show to our patients and communities how we work closely together as one, even if we are in these different teams. It's all to make sure we're delivering the right care for all our patients."
Read more about the events on our News Archive pages:
