On Tuesday 14 March, resident Brian Mier approached Yarra Ranges Council to broach community health issues, discussing heart health, diabetes and dementia awareness.
He described himself as being in his last phase of community health promotion in the Yarra Ranges and began by discussing heart health, a subject he has personal experience with.
“It remains and has been for many years, the biggest cause of preventable death…it would be more preventable with much better health care across all three levels of government and a fair amount of the disease could be reduced or even eliminated,” he said.
Mr Meir has recent lived experience with heart health issues, having suffered an angina episode in June 2019 and followed by a triple bypass surgery in September later in the same year.
“I had an erratic path to find cardiac rehab,” he said.
“I discovered there was nothing available in our community municipality to help me at the community level to understand what I was going through and to manage it better.”
Mr Meir said there had been one group called “Heartbeat” available in the region at Knox but it shut down during Covid-19.
He said he then discovered the Australian Centre for Heart Health in North Melbourne in 2021.
The facility focuses on the heart and mind connection and produced a film called “Pump it”.
Mr Mier obtained the rights to the film and developed a workshop called “Minding the Heart” with Doctor Michelle Rogerson, which saw two successful events hosted in Lilydale and Healesville but didn’t proceed elsewhere as planned.
Mr Mier would like the council’s assistance to provide venues outside of Lilydale and promote the film.
“I would like the council to support the event with promotion,” he said.
He went on to discuss some information sessions that will be held by the National Diabetes Service Scheme (NDSS) on the 31st of May that he would like to promote to the public.
Mr Mier was concerned about the amount of sugar in modern food and the prevalence of diabetes in the community.
He again asked the council for assistance to promote the events in the future.
The third topic was dementia awareness and he wanted assistance to run promotion and awareness events.
“We want to run it around to other places like Belgrave, maybe Monbulk, Yarra Junction,” he said.
He finished up his time with a plea to the council.
“What I want to do is to urge the council to take a more active role in this crucial part of human life and reconsider what it appears to have accepted so far,” he said.
“Health is declining as are our health resources.”
“In my view, it will be up to local government to play a more proactive role in future monitoring of health and gathering people together in the health network, like what we have done in a small way in Healesville with the Healesville Health and Wellbeing Network. ”
Mr Mier also requested an official staff liaison from the council.
Councillor Fiona McAllister said it was great to see Mr Mier again and thanked him for his efforts in the community thus far.
She enquired if Eastern Health was also able to help with the community health initiatives as Mr Mier is also a volunteer there.
Eastern Health has a cardiac collaborative team that Mr Mier was recruited to which has the aim to review the whole cardiac system post discharge to reduce readmissions.
“It’s a work in progress because it is fairly new to them having consumer reps involved,” Mr Mier said.
Cr McAllister also commented that herself and Mr Mier liaise further in the future regarding the Save the Healesville Hospital group and the outreach in that group.
Mayor Jim Child also thanked Mr Mier for raising the issues with the council.
“Thank you Brian and thank you for raising those important issues in regards to heart disease, diabetes, and dementia,” he said.
