This year’s Fieldays had 133,000 visitors in total, and more than 33,000 of these visited the Health and Wellbeing Hub.

Opened on the morning of Wednesday 16 June by Kiingi Tūheitia, the Hub was home to 33 organisations, including Diabetes NZ. It was a very popular part of the event, and at its busiest more than 1,700 people per hour were coming through the doors!

This year our focus was foot care. We encouraged people to check their feet daily, as abnormal symptoms such as changes in foot colour and ulcers can be warning signs of diabetes. We also gave away 1,450 tubes of Du’It foot cream, courtesy of our sponsor Du’It.

We spoke with some 1,400 people about the risks of type 2 diabetes, some of whom came straight to us because they were already concerned that they were at risk; some of whom hadn’t considered their diabetes risk before. We also saw many more stopping to look at our video on foot care or picking up some of the useful information we had available.

We were delighted to be next to Kidney Care NZ and across the way from the Waikato DHB Diabetes clinical team, who tested blood glucose levels for more than 1,200 visitors. Along with being great neighbours, we were all able to provide supporting information and direct visitors to each other, enhancing the experience for all visitors to our stands.

Diabetes NZ Chief Executive Heather Verry appeared on Fieldays TV, discussing key health concerns affecting rural NZers now and in the future and how to break the barriers to good health.

The video of Heather’s interview is available on the Fieldays website; HERE.

A big thank you to the staff from Waikato, Rotorua and Tauranga and the volunteers from the Diabetes NZ Waikato branch who ran our stand.

Many thanks to our event sponsors Skellerup and Du’It, and our champion sponsor Fitbit.