Two Kiwi Indian girls, Kritika Satija and Jignal Bhagvandas are on an altruistic path to help the community with Diabetes awareness and some free exercise classes.
Kritika is a qualified Physiotherapist and Jignal is a third year medical student.
The idea came about when they were discussing how poor Indian cardiovascular health is for adults in our community as a result of the 'typical Indian lifestyle'. The adults in Indian community work long hours eat poor food and do not exercise. This all contributes to the statistics we have which shows that Asians are the fastest growing population in NZ comprising 9.2% of the total population. In 2010, there were 40,190 Indians in Auckland DHB area and this is going to increase by >62% to 65,155 Indians.
There are activities out there for our adults such as cricket clubs and hockey clubs, but nothing seems to target specifically our adults. Indian women are also forgotten, there is nothing that really includes them either. A common response in our community is “ In our culture, making time out to seek preventive behaviours is really hard. When they have a disease, that’s when they’ll really want to learn and make a change, and even then, they’re really good with taking medications, but not necessarily changing the way that they do things in their life in terms of eating and exercise.” (Ref - Health needs assessment of Asian people living in the Auckland region, Aug 2012).
In addition, several health professionals have also noted that there are increasing volumes of younger South Asian patients developing CVD and diabetes in Auckland. We decided we really wanted to do something about this and have developed free dance, yoga and Pilates classes that tackle the barriers this population faces!
The barriers that are usually encountered by south-asian people include:
Language, lack of knowledge of NZ health system, cultural differences in assessment and treatment, lack of cultural competency among health professionals, transport to health provider and cost.
Public funding is naturally very limited, and they do not have funding at the moment and hence cannot afford advertising. This project will be run by volunteers just wanting to see a change in our community.
A range of activities include:
1) Free yoga, Pilates and Indian dance classes run by health professionals for adults aged 20+ to join and working with Indian health professionals in the Auckland region to really target the health issues our population faces.
2) Educate people about the NZ health system and other health-related education by inviting doctors, psychologists, nurses and nutritionists for example who will briefly talk to our participants about different diseases they are at risk of, what can be done to prevent this, encourage them to keep up what they are doing and to remind them why it is so essential to improve our lifestyles.
3) Providing targeted services for Asian communities in Auckland and this will be done by involving south-asian health professionals - In particular, more South Asian youth health professionals for teaching and co-coordinating these classes.
For more information, please contact: Jignal 0210697007 or Kritika 0211329329 for more information