To help people ‘breathe better ’in the southern Yorke Peninsula, Asthma Australia has been funded by Country SA PHN to bring a new service to help tackle the high rates of asthma in the area. Driven and led by community members, it aims to be a value-add to local health care services.
Kerry Goldsworthy, a local with a long history of severe asthma, has been employed as the Asthma Community Connector. She operates out of two offices, one in Minlaton and one in Yorketown on Wednesdays. Kerry covers the area south of Maitland and Ardrossan, and from October, she will also be visiting the Point Pearce Community once a month on Tuesdays.
Her role is to be a support for people with breathing issues. She understands and shares many of their experiences. As such, she wants to help the community build an ‘Asthma Smart Community’, where people don’t have to hide their condition and are confident to manage it. She listens to what people want to talk about regarding their asthma and provides information, education and lots of resources including “Breathe Better on Yorkes” t-shirts.
The idea for the project is drawn from a similar one in the Mid North of South Australia at Peterborough, Jamestown and Orroroo, where there is also an Asthma Community Connector. Local people with asthma helped Asthma Australia learn what it is like living with breathing problems in their area. They were mainly managing alone, felt like hiding their condition, were ‘allergic to their jobs’ and wanted better information. Now the local Yorke Peninsula community is fine tuning this project to suit its own context; effectively ‘localising’ the service.
Many local stakeholders are supporting the project, including being part of a local steering committee. Members involved are local representatives from the Yorke and Northern LHN, GP clinics, pharmacies, council, the Aboriginal Health Service, the Southern Community Hub, the local community transport service and consumers.
If you would like to hear more about the project, what the Asthma Community Connector can do for you, or how you could become more involved, please contact Kgoldsworthy@asthma.com.au or 0498 073 899. Perhaps you might like to share your story, like the participant below has?
Participant story
“We woke to Lilly having an asthma attack which led to us having to call an ambulance & Lilly spending the rest of the night in the Yorketown hospital. This was the first attack we have ever experienced and it was truly terrifying” she said. “We are excited to have this new asthma project coming to us here on Yorkes. This is going to be such a beneficial service for anyone living with asthma to gain more information and awareness and can hopefully give us the tools to be better prepared in case this should ever happen again”
