Transition The Grove is paying a lot of attention to health from the perspective of local resilience. We’re not resilient if our health depends on massively expensive complex external processes. We need to take charge of our health locally and learn how to keep fit and well.
Australia has built a disease industry that absorbs a big proportion of our national income to operate. As a nation we are increasingly expecting access to expensive medical products and services.
Often there are very straight-forward simple things we can do ourselves to look after our health. Managing our own health well is the starting point. There is a lot we can do once we take responsibility for keeping well and looking after ourselves and our families.
We’ve been collecting ideas on our website for how we can keep well locally.
A common theme that emerges again and again is tackling obesity. We reckon that if our whole community here in The Grove took on losing excess weight together we would create a local health revolution.
The government has arrived at the same conclusion. The head of the Australian National Preventative Health Agency Rhonda Galbally has delivered Health Minister Nicola Roxon her first one-year operational plan and it asks for a community-engaged model to work on smoking risky drinking and obesity. It is calling for a series of sustained weight loss programs to be rolled out more widely across the nation.