Heartbeat of Football (HoF) has concluded it's Community Football Heart Health Awareness Tour, bringing much needed awareness to heart health within our community.
Throughout the last month, HoF travelled to nine different football clubs to provide free health screenings and education. In total 355 people were tested, 60% of who were male and 40% female, while 51% were below the age of 40.
Lack of awareness around heart health is a major contributing factor to heart disease and this showed in the testing. Of the 355 people tested, 64% did not know their blood pressure, 88% did not know their cholesterol read and 80% were unaware of their blood sugar (glucose) level.
The tests showed 31% of participants had high blood pressure, 19% had high cholesterol and 10% had high blood sugar. This led to HoF advising 42.4% of people to follow up with their GP as one or more factors tested outside the normal/healthy range.
While confronting, the findings have the potential to be life changing by encouraging people to take preventative action - resulting in the Community Football Heart Health Awareness Tour to be a great success.
The FV team also thanks the HoF team for its generosity at the latest Community In Business event. A competition was held throughout the day which resulted in the winning Club, Manningham United Blues FC receiving a defibrillator.
The Community Football Heart Health Awareness Tour was proudly supported by FV and the Victorian Department of Health's Partners for Change program.
Since Football Victoria (FV) and HoF announced the formal partnership in June, the organisations have pledged to tackle heart health with a three pronged approach.
- Awareness & Education: player, participant, and community programs.
- Prevention: minimisation of health risks through simple screening checks; and
- Action: “rescue-ready” defibrillators at all sporting fields across Victoria