Stoke GP Sally Harris wants to increase awareness of the Warmer Healthier Homes programme among doctors in Nelson and Tasman after seeing its benefits firsthand last winter.
The programme started last year and aims to insulate the homes of low income families for free to help improve their health. It insulated 145 homes in the region last year with the majority of these being referred to the scheme by doctors and health professionals, and Sally says she is “a big fan of the project”.
“I referred one of my patients to it before the start of last winter,” Sally, who works at Stoke Medical Centre, says.
“She is a young mum with four young children and they were always coming to see me with recurring coughs and chest infections and asthma.
“They are a motivated but low income couple and there’s no way they could afford to insulate their home so we referred her to Warmer Healthier Homes and now I never see them. I was amazed at the difference a warm, insulated home made to their health – it was quite dramatic.”
Now, Sally wants to promote the scheme among GPS, saying it is a great way for doctors to be proactive about improving their patients’ health.
“The Warmer Healthier Homes people are doing a good job of promoting the scheme to home owners, but I think the message needs to get through to doctors as well,” she says.
And Bill Dahlberg, who is a trustee of the Rata Foundation which initiated and helps fund the programme, agrees, saying health professionals “played a big part” in the success of first year of the scheme.
He says 84 per cent of referrals came from GPs and clinicians and they need their support to target the right families for the second stage of the project.
Bill says Rata is providing $150,000 for “stage two” of the scheme, with its partners Nelson City Council, providing $100,000 over three years, and the Nelson Marlborough District Health Board, providing $50,000.
The government’s Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority is matching that funding dollar for dollar, which means Warmer Healthier Homes plans to spend around $560,000 insulating Nelson and Tasman homes in the next year.
The Nelson Tasman Housing Trust is contracted to manage the project with assistance from the NMDHB and Nelson Bays Primary Health. It is delivered through Nelson-based insulation specialists Absolute Energy which is one of only nine ECCA-approved providers in the country.
