National Heart Foundation

New campaign tackles high blood cholesterol

Consumers urged to 'eat their way to a healthy heart'

The National Heart Foundation of Australia is stepping up its efforts to encourage the six million Australians who have high blood cholesterol to make healthy eating and physical activity part of their everyday life.

The "Manage Life - Manage Cholesterol" campaign was launched in Melbourne today by the Hon Trish Worth MP, Parliamentary Secretary to the Federal Minister for Health and Ageing, and welcomed by the Consumers' Health Forum of Australia.

National Heart Foundation of Australia Principal Executive Officer, Dr Lyn Roberts AM, said one in every two adults had a high blood cholesterol level - increasing their risk of heart disease and stroke.

"Every second adult Australian has high blood cholesterol that needs to be lowered to help avoid heart disease," Dr Roberts said.

"High blood cholesterol is not a life sentence. For most people it's preventable. We want to empower people so they can literally eat their way to a healthy heart.

"Changing their eating patterns to avoid saturated fats and participating in moderate intensity physical activity each day will help most people improve their blood cholesterol levels.

"Many of the recommended food changes are quite simple. Cutting down on take-away foods, switching to low fat milk and yoghurt, eating fish at least twice a week and avoiding fatty meats - for most people these are easy, practical changes," she said.

Research conducted for the Heart Foundation found low awareness of the role of saturated fats in blood cholesterol, confusion about many food and nutrition messages, and that rural consumers were resistant to messages encouraging reduced consumption of saturated animal fats and eggs.

"People are looking for information they can trust to help them better manage their blood cholesterol," Dr Roberts said.

A new brochure and a fridge magnet listing 13 ways to make healthier food choices will be available from the Heart Foundation's Heartline on 1300 36 27 87 and website, and will be distributed through doctors' clinics. The Consumers' Health Forum of Australia will use these resources in a series of consumer workshops around Australia.

The campaign, funded under a grant from the Federal Government, will also include targeted media activities, advertising in doctors' waiting rooms, and community service advertisements in regional areas.

Ms Worth said that the Federal Government has a strong interest in this campaign.

"We want people to enjoy a healthy lifestyle, and to recognise that high blood cholesterol is preventable," Ms Worth said.

"If we can reduce the incidence of high cholesterol, we can reduce the pressure that preventable diseases place on our health system."

"I congratulate the National Heart Foundation of Australia with the support of the Consumers' Health Forum of Australia on the materials developed for this campaign."

"This consumer education campaign complements other initiatives such as those being undertaken by the National Prescribing Service (NPS)," Ms Worth said.

Chairperson of the Consumers' Health Forum of Australia, Mr Lou McCallum, said that "consumers are looking for information about health options and things they can do for themselves to maintain and improve their health".

"Consumers should benefit from the growing bank of knowledge that is relevant to health."

"We will be conducting community workshops around Australia in coming months to encourage consumers to ask their health providers about the options for managing blood cholesterol. People need to know that changing the way they eat or becoming more active might mean they don't need medicine or that it might help their medicine work better."

"We all have a responsibility to work together to reduce preventable illnesses and make better use of our health resources including medicines," Mr McCallum said.

SPECIAL NOTES:

Cardiovascular disease remains Australia's biggest killer with almost 50,000 deaths a year. It is also the most costly disease for the health system absorbing around 12% of all health spending and accounting for 7.5% of all hospitalisations.

Information about the role of high blood cholesterol in heart disease can be found at www.heartfoundation.com.au