Our Health Navigators conduct free health and wellbeing checks for residents and ensure that everyone has access to vital health information. Residents can come along to a session and have various health checks done. To date, our volunteers have done over 2,000 checks.

As part of the check, our trained volunteers measure and record blood pressure. This simple intervention can reveal vital information about a person’s health, including their risk of stroke, heart attack, cardiovascular disease, kidney disease and vascular dementia. Read more about high blood pressure on the NHS website.

A staggering 26% of residents seen by our Health Navigators displayed a higher than normal reading. In partnership with NHS South West London Integrated Care System, we have a robust referral process in place, to ensure that every resident who is at risk of developing high blood pressure is advised to make a GP appointment. All blood pressure readings are swiftly submitted to residents’ registered GPs.

In the most severe of cases, such as the 10 people showing with very high blood pressure (over 180/110), we have had to direct them to medical help without delay. And in one case, a resident was taken to A&E by one of our volunteers!  The resident did not have any symptoms, but had a dangerously high reading, despite already being on medication for blood pressure. She was sent home from A&E and told to double the medication and review with her GP.

Many people seen have not had their blood pressure measured in years, and these examples highlight how this simple intervention is helping to prevent disease and save lives.

Interested in becoming a Health Navigator? Please give us your details here and one of the team will be in touch soon.