Northland women join frontline of diabetes prevention
Morning Report
Two Northland women have gone from struggling to find work to fighting the region’s diabetes epidemic.
Christine Hape and Hineataahua Brown are training to become New Zealand’s first “footcare assistants”, working alongside podiatrists to help prevent amputations from diseases like diabetes.
Hape hadn’t planned on working with feet when she moved to Northland.
“I’m loving it,” she laughed. “I didn’t realise how much I love feet.
“Why I love it is just seeing our whānau stand up and say, ‘Oh my gosh, I feel like I’m walking on a cloud. Oh, you’ve done magic on my feet’. Tthat’s pretty heartwarming for myself.”
The former special-needs teacher was looking for caregiving work, when the Ngāti Hine Health Trust approached her with an unexpected opportunity.
The clinic is the first in the country to hire and train footcare assistants, a new qualification aimed at preventing diabetes-related amputations.
Chief executive Tamati Shepherd-Wipiiti says diabetes is massively over-represented in his region.
“Our patient database tells us that over 60 percent have either type 1, type 2 or are pre-diabetic,” he said. “Now that’s three times the national average.
“Diabetes is killing our whānau.”
When the government announced the qualification last year, Shepherd-Wipiiti jumped at the chance to boost the clinic’s diabetes workforce.
“We were first in the country to trial the new foot care assistant credential,” he explained. “We took two wonderful wahine toa, who came off the benefit.
“We’re putting them through their training, which involves online and work-based learning.
“They can become qualified footcare assistants in November and they’ll be the first two in the country.”
Hape said her role was to ease the burden on Ngāti Hine’s podiatrist, who has seen enormous demand in recent years.
“We take care of all the basic footcare that helps lessen the load for our podiatrists – basic nail cutting, filing,” she explained.
“At the moment, we specialise in doing the diabetic foot assessments for our whānau. We can then refer them on to our podiatrist.”
Hape and colleague Brown travelled rural Northland to run outreach clinics and house visits for those who couldn’t travel to Whangarei.
Brown grew up in Ngāti Hine, but said she never realised how widespread diabetes had become.
“Coming from Ngāti Hine, diabetes was never talked about. Before I started my role, I didn’t know anything about diabetes,” she said.
“I didn’t even know my own grandfather had diabetes. I didn’t know that my nana couldn’t get to the doctors, so she wasn’t going to her appointments.
“When we go out there, our nurses are able to give her those simple health checks and we’re able to give them footcare, and everything they need is at their fingertips.”
Balancing her work in the community with online classes to earn her certification, she said the last several months had fast-tracked her education.
“It’s really cool to do theory, and then be able to – the next day – go and actually do the practical work,” she said. “We’re able to study statistics, and then we’re going into the community and seeing them firsthand.”
Brown felt the clinic was breaking the stigma around diabetes and patients were grateful.
“I’ve had a kuia that’s tried to shove $100 down my scrub top,” she laughed. “I am not lying.
“We’ve had kuia that stand up after our outreaches have finished and their voices are wiri-ing from gratefulness, because they were so embarrassed of their feet.”
Shepherd-Wipiiti said his own complications from type 2 diabetes had shown him the importance of footcare.
“I have myself had a partial foot amputation,” he said. “I lost the front of my left foot.
“I know what that means and I know what it means for whānau. I have a two-year-old daughter.
“I’m about to have a son, and I want to do basic things like run around and kick a ball, and I’m able to and I want other whānau to be able to.”
Shepherd-Wipiiti said Hape and Brown’s work had already made a difference in the community, and he planned to take on two more footcare assistants to keep building Ngāti Hine’s workforce.
