In an effort to promote healthier lifestyles among Northlanders, the Green Prescription programme has joined forces with health coaches across Te Tai Tokerau. This collaboration aims to create a more cohesive approach to encouraging healthy habits and wellbeing in the community.

I’m Claudia the Healthy Lifestyle Lead at Sport Northland. Over the last few months, the Green Prescription team has worked towards strengthening connections with health coaches across Northland. The purpose of this initiative is to form a more cohesive collaboration between the two services to help encourage healthy lifestyles among Northlanders.

Over the course of a couple of months, kaimahi of the Green Prescription team have met with each health coach individually to share knowledge about the Green Prescription programme and the work we do. We then had the opportunity to present at the Health Coaches' quarterly meeting, further strengthening the new collaborative relationships being formed.

As a result, we have seen an increase in referrals from health coaches by over 50%. More significantly, there is better communication happening between the health coaches and Healthy Lifestyle support staff about how participants are tracking with their healthy lifestyle journeys.

I am excited about the future of our relationship and the success of this collaboration. It promises to pave the way for building similar partnerships with other health services in the community. By working together, it has shown we are able to create a network of support that enhances the wellbeing and lifestyles of those we serve, creating healthier communities together.

At Sport Northland we exist to enrich Northlander's lives by inspiring and enabling more movement and one of the ways we do this is through Green Prescription - supporting people on their journey. If you would like some support with your activity goals, give us a call on phone 0800 ACTIVE… we are here to help

Article written by Claudia Ashby, Healthy Lifetyle Lead