ABP at Fieldays, November 2022
One of the key goals of New Zealand’s Aotearoa Brain Project – Kaupapa Roro o Aotearoa (ABP) is to improve hauora roro (brain health) by raising awareness of the importance of brain health and helping people understand what they can do to make their brain health a priority.
We’re also passionate about connecting the brain health researchers, who are familiar with the world of the laboratory, with the brain health advocates and funders, who are familiar with the lived experiences and impact of illness, to improve the delivery of brain health solutions to people that need them.
Fieldays is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest Agricultural and Pastoral shows, held at the Mystery Creek Event Centre in Waikato, and ABP was thrilled to have a stall in the Hauora Taiwhenua Health & Wellbeing Hub at the November 2022 Fieldays show. The show drew a crowd of 75,000 attendees across four days, with attractions ranging from tractor racing to free hearing and blood pressure checks.
Along with other brain health groups from NZ, including university neuroscience research centres, NGOs, and advocacy groups, we formed a ‘Neurohub’ within the larger health hub. ABP helped support the ‘big brain’ get to Mystery Creek from the University of Otago, which was a highlight of the Neurohub and sparked conversations about looking after your brain with the young and old alike. Plastinated brains were also used to educate about the effects of mate wareware (dementia), stroke, and the differences between human brains and other species like cats, mice, and dolphins.
At the ABP stall we were interested in hearing people’s concerns were about brain health and looking after their brain, so we could use this knowledge to help shape our activities for 2023. The key themes which came through were a deep interest in mental health, especially for the rural farming community, a desire to hear about lifestyles for keeping the brain healthy, and a real support for brain research to lead the way in finding treatments to prevent, delay or recover from brain disorders. This encourages us to continue and extend such outreach activities in 2023.
