Health Promotion is premised on ‘health’ being a resource for everyday life, not the objective of living. It promotes health as a positive concept, emphasizing social and personal resources, as well as physical capacities. Therefore, health promotion is not just the responsibility of the health sector but goes beyond healthy life-styles to well-being.
Coeliac New Zealand are in the process of confirming a 5-year Health Promotion plan which will focus on the following areas of improvement:
- Build healthy public policy – e.g. utilising CD research to enable easy food options in restaurants, workplace and school food outlets, and supermarkets etc.
- Create supportive environments – e.g. facilitate easy access to accurate and easy to understand CD information (build a trusted ‘go to’ social media presence).
- Strengthen community action – e.g. encourage, enable, and support progressive CD peer support relevant per age-group in communities across Aotearoa New Zealand.
- Reorient health services – e.g. raise CD awareness among health professionals across Aotearoa New Zealand, making access to current research and contemporary best practice information readily accessible to them.
- Develop personal skills – e.g. through all the above actions plus targeted information easily accessible and in a selection of languages for children and adults with medically diagnosed CD (inclusive of clear messaging re the need for medical diagnosis), to enable informed decisions about managing their personal condition and their wider health outcomes.
The immediate focus will be to:
- Address the anxiety & vulnerability felt by parents of children / people with coeliac disease re COVID-19.
- Raise GPs alertness to coeliac disease.
- Improve food industry options for people with coeliac disease.
Long term when funding constraints are relaxed Coeliac NZ will be able to appoint a designated health promotion professional to deliver on this plan. Please email Wendy Bremner (manager@coeliac.org.nz) if you are interested in finding our more about this project or would like to make a donation or bequest.
