Listen Now: 
Download AudioOne of the speakers at next week’s Future of Medicine conference in Auckland wants to see more focus on prevention than cures.
Louise Schofield is the co-founder of PreKure, a social enterprise that encourages medical professionals to consider disease prevention and lifestyle-based treatments.
She says doctors and nurses don’t come into the profession to dispense pills, but the modern practice of medicine is incomplete.
She says less than 3 percent of the health budget is spent on prevention.
“There is just too much demand for healthcare – 90 percent of visits to GPs are around preventative lifestyle medicine so where are the massive campaigns around that kai is medicine, that fitness is medicine, that sleep is medicine? Let’s get out there with big campaigns to reduce the demand for healthcare to begin with,” Dr Schofield says.
She says because there aren’t enough GPS and health professionals coming through, so it make sense to upskill the community and kaiawhina workforce including training in lifestyle medicine.
Conference website: https://thefutureofmedicine.co
RELATED NEWS
