NEWS

Great news for Rheumatic Heart Disease Prevention!  We’re very pleased to announce that Bupa and Take Heart’s partnership is set to continue with Bupa’s announcement that Bupa Health Foundation will fund the Take Heart Evaluation.  It’s a two-year evaluation of Take Heart across five Northern Territory communities to assess message retention, monitor changes to behaviour to evaluate the impact on seeking treatment and adherence to medication regimes. The evaluation will be led by researchers from the University of Melbourne and the Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin.’

This is Bupa’s announcement:

Last year, Bupa proudly worked in partnership with Moonshine Movies, RHD Australia, the National Heart Foundation, Aspen Foundation and many other key partners as part of our commitment to raising awareness and helping communities to take action to prevent and eliminate Rheumatic Heart Disease from the top end of Australia.

Australia’s Indigenous first peoples continue to have among the highest rates of RHD in the world, despite Rheumatic Heart Disease being 100% preventable.

Take Heart Program

The Take Heart Program aims to increase awareness of Acute Rheumatic Fever and Rheumatic Heart Disease in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in the Northern Territory to improve compliance to treatment and health outcomes.

As its centerpiece, Take Heart: The Quest to Rid Australasia of Rheumatic Heart Disease, a powerful and provocative documentary, tells the story of RHD among Aboriginal communities and its devastating impact on the health of children and adolescents.

Bupa proudly supported the community outreach for this film including facilitating national film screenings, developing resources for Top End Health Workers and running community education events in the Tiwi Islands and other Aboriginal communities. We have also been involved in a range of associated educational initiatives and Government advocacy efforts to help raise awareness of the disease and preventative actions. The Take Heart Action Toolkit  is now being distributed nationally to impacted communities.

And it is exciting to announce that our work does not stop there.

Bupa Health Foundation funds the Take Heart Evaluation

As a further show of our ongoing support, we’re thrilled to announce our commitment to RHD just got stronger.

As an important contribution to Bupa’s Reconciliation Action Plan , the Bupa Health Foundation will fund a a two-year evaluation of Take Heart across five Northern Territory communities to assess message retention, monitor changes to behaviour to evaluate the impact on seeking treatment and adherence to medication regimes. The evaluation will be led by researchers from the University of Melbourne and the Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin.

With the Foundation’s support to evaluate the Take Heart outreach program, we aim to equip communities to identify early symptoms and seek treatment to help eradicate RHD in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

This is a meaningful example of how Bupa is contributing to improving health outcomes for First Australians to help close the health gap by addressing the factors contributing to the prevalence of RHD.

Stay tuned as we will be sharing more information on our impact and outcomes of the trial on the Take Heart website. For more information on the Bupa Health Foundation please go to: www.bupa.com.au/foundation