Health Checks were offered at Rickerby Spring Show this year as part of a rural and agriculture outreach project with Primary Care Services North Cumbria.
Colleagues from various organisations joined with primary care during the annual show to ensure that farming communities were offered an opportunity to check their health, as well as raising 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 took part in these important checks.”
The free health checks proved very popular with attendees at the event with more than 75 people taking part. The checks also offered further cholesterol blood tests working in collaboration with North East North Cumbria Health Innovation and PocDoc which also forms part of a cardiovascular disease prevention programme.
Dr Robert Westgate, GP at Carlisle Healthcare and Chair of North Cumbria General Practice Leadership Team added: “I appreciate the farming community don’t often seek health advice as much as the general population, that’s partly long hours and the rurality of their roles. So it’s great that we can be here at the show to raise awareness of mental health, early cancer detection and heart health.
"It has been a great opportunity to work on health inequalities and to embed this very much in the heart of the farming community.”
The Rickerby Spring Show, which ran over the 6th and 7th March, attracts hundreds of people every year and is an important date for many in the farming community as Martyn Henderson, Rickerby Sales Director at Carlisle explains: “Rickerby Show is an accumulation of all our representatives of our manufacturers of all the products we sell to farmers in agricultural world. It’s a chance for everybody to come down and meet the manufacturer, ask questions, plan ahead for the next year. So it’s like a big advert, as well as hopefully a pleasant experience.
“A lot of farming communities are out in remote environments and there’s a lot of pressure in agriculture and farming. We’re all a bit guilty, we’ve got a job to do, we want to work and we forget about our own personal health. So this is an ideal opportunity for customers to have a bit of a craic and if they’re not feeling up to scratch here and there, there’s this open forum. So hopefully it does everybody a bit of good.”
Teams from local practices were also joined by colleagues from North Cumbria NHS Talking Therapies a team from Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust Health that supports mental health.
Nicola Hinde, Cognitive Behavioural Therapist from North Cumbria NHS Talking Therapies said: “We’ve talked to a number of people already from the farming community which is great because we’ve been able to get the word out about our service and how people don’t have to struggle in silence.
"It’s really important to make people aware of how to access our service which provides mental health treatment such as therapy.”
Another focus at the show was on raising awareness of the importance of cancer screening and providing relevant information, working with the Northern Cancer Alliance.
Joel Vilchez, Primary Care Network Cancer Engagement Lead from Primary Care Services North Cumbria said: “Today wasn’t just about the physical health tests as we were also having important conversations and spreading awareness around self-checking for cancer signs, because we know that early detection can dramatically improve chances of successful treatment.
“We really hope that the conversations and information that was provided today can make their way back to people’s homes so families and friends can discuss these important issues.”
Sam Gargett continued: “It really was a excellent experience of collaborative working over these two days and a huge thank you goes out to everyone involved especially all the team at Rickerby Ltd for making us feel very welcome and providing people with this brilliant opportunity.”
