Women from North Belfast’s Ligoniel community recently benefitted when a collaborative Well Woman clinic was hosted, boosted by one pharmacist’s involvement.

Rooney Pharmacy contractor Gerry Rooney was first contacted by Maria Burke, a co-ordinator, and together secured Building the Community Pharmacy Partnership funding for a health and wellbeing event. “I have been involved with the Ligoniel community for some time, having delivered talks on various health topics to different groups, including local schools,” Gerry told NIPinF.

“However, this time we focused on diagnostics and screening, to raise awareness about the other things which are available from pharmacies. We ran full health MOT checks, including blood pressure, cholesterol testing and weight management while we also took blood glucose measurements and advised people about the risks associated with weight gain such as diabetes.”

The event, which welcomed over fifty local women, was supported by Roche Diabetes Care and national accounts manager Paul McSorley was on hand to help with the testing. “Our involvement in this event was to support pharmacy on a very local level,” he said.

“Gerry was helping to run the event to support local women very successfully so we were happy to contribute. It is initiatives such as this one which hold real value because the public is the real winner. They also see another side to community pharmacy which they may not have been previously aware of.”

The day yielded some excellent feedback and Gerry is hoping to replicate the model for men in the near future. “It would be great to do something for the male population, especially since this is a traditionally difficult patient group to access,” he added. “Being part of wider health and wellbeing initiatives helps our health promotion agenda and to forge better connections within the community. I would like to thank Paul and his colleagues for their support as they were extremely helpful in promoting and delivering our services on the day.”