Blood pressure campaign success

Wairarapa residents contributed strongly to the Stroke Foundation's blood pressure campaign last October with at least 350 people having their pressure tested at the region's four New World supermarket sites, as part of a national campaign. In a follow-up survey nationally, four out of 10 said they were taking action to control their blood pressure as a result.

"Normally it's quite difficult for most health promotion campaigns to produce behaviour change," said Stroke Foundation health promotion manager Julia Rout on publishing the campaign evaluation report.

"Improvements in people's understanding or knowledge are common, but getting people to take action to improve their health is the Holy Grail of health promotion. Even if we can't be certain everyone is really making changes this survey certainly shows that the messages about blood pressure and stroke are getting through to a high proportion of participants in our campaign."

The testing was carried out at Carterton, Masterton, Pahiatua and Dannevirke New World supermarkets.

Nationally, nearly 20,000 shoppers at 168 sites had their blood pressure tested. This year's testing day will be October 4.