Page 1158 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 3 May 2006
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On this point, Access Economics reported in 2003 that every dollar invested in cardiovascular research produced an eightfold return in both direct and indirect health savings and improved wellbeing. This is a considerable contribution when factoring that since 1959 the Heart Foundation has contributed more than $100 million towards research into the treatment and prevention of cardiovascular disease. I will again be holding my annual heart day healthy red breakfast on Friday, and I would urge everybody, if they can, to come along. If we raise just $200, this would contribute a $1,800 saving in direct and indirect health costs and improved wellbeing—an amazing statistic and an amount that, hopefully, we will well and truly exceed.
Heart Week promotes good health by contributing to the development of a community understanding that highlights the need for an active and healthy lifestyle. Research into cardiovascular disease is essential. However, nothing can substitute the value of a healthy lifestyle. Sometimes seeing a red garment or having a healthy heart breakfast can be the best promoters for a healthy heart. They are small visual signs that contribute to a discourse of healthiness that runs throughout the community, hopefully exacting small changes that can make a big difference not just to our health but to the health of our community as well.
The ACT division of the Heart Foundation performs an invaluable role in contributing to both the treatment and prevention of cardiovascular disease. However, we are facing a public health crisis in the coming years unless a greater commitment is invested now. What is required is a strategic response that draws from the support of the entire community and, in particular, the support of government from all levels. In this respect, the ACT government is playing a pivotal role in promoting a healthy lifestyle to Canberrans and as such is playing a crucial preventative role against the prevalence of cardiovascular disease in our community.
In early December 2004 the ACT government launched the Health Promoting Schools web site, which was developed to support ACT schools, teachers, parents, community members and community agencies in improving students’ health and education. This is a targeted approach to identify early lifestyle choices and behaviours in children that may increase the risk of developing cardiovascular disease in the future. This is also an approach to highlight the dangers of cardiovascular disease to those who might already be at risk or have developed signs of it. It also ties nicely in with other government initiatives such as Kids at Play and Eat Well ACT.
Targeted initiatives such as these are important, particularly where the costs of identifying, screening and modifying behaviour are low compared with the relatively high costs associated with the intervention and treatment of cardiovascular disease in later years. This is why it is so important for government to promote ways that both individuals and communities can modify their behaviour to live a healthier lifestyle. Here, governments are in a gate-keeping position to influence the knowledge and behaviour of a population, and this is particularly important when we realise that the cost of addressing many of the risks associated with cardiovascular disease can be small, inexpensive lifestyle persuasions.
The Stanhope government’s kids at play program is a good example of this—a simple, inexpensive yet effective program to target childhood obesity and, therefore,
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