December is officially upon us, and so with open arms we welcome Mr Gillette back into our hairy lives. All that growing and grooming was worth the hardship, and our Fovember team raised €6,451 so far for men’s health this November, ranking sixth on Ireland’s team leaderboard.

Our success this year, however, lies with the opportunity to provide over 300 farmers with free health checks.

The Irish Farmers Journal teamed up with Full Health Medical, ICOS and Movember Ireland to bring these free health checks to marts around the country as part of our Fovember campaign.

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These health checks highlighted a number of problems facing our farming men. Most alarmingly, almost 90% were overweight, and almost 70% were suffering from high blood pressure.

Our aim this year was to start a conversation about farmers’ health, and how they look after their animals and their crops better than they look after themselves.

We hope we have done just that, and that farmers everywhere will take the first step and get themselves checked – to live happier, healthier, longer lives on the farm and with their families.

Thanks to our four Fovember ambassadors, all the marts who participated, the farmers who called in for a free health check, and everyone else who got involved and donated.

Visit www.moteam.co/fovember to give one final donation to team Fovember, to raise funds for men’s health, until 9 December.

staying health aware

As November draws to a close, we take stock of the “Fovember” campaign. This campaign was designed to take advantage of the increased health awareness we all experience this month, thanks to the recent “Movember” movements, aimed at increasing awareness of men’s health. Farmers are one group who often let their own health slide onto the back burner as they are busy and distracted with many other aspects of life. There is often also a fear of the unknown and a fear of finding out something bad.

Health screening, such as that offered by Full Health Medical, is actually designed to identify issues before they have a chance to turn into larger problems, and their software provides an excellent platform to do this in an efficient and effective way. The offering from the Full Health team provides a streamlined solution, which has already been adopted by global corporations, such as Honda, in order to provide more efficient health screening for their employees.

This campaign demonstrated that the same tools can be used to improve the health of the general population, which will be extremely important going forward. As the population ages and health becomes a more expensive commodity, it will be very important to screen and improve people’s health before they develop costly chronic diseases, such as Type 2 Diabetes and heart disease.

Every farmer seen as part of the Fovember campaign received their own report and was given advice and tips to improve any problems found. This enables the farmers to know and understand exactly what state their health is in, and they can then take ownership of their own health and know what they need to do to improve it, increasing the chances of living a long and healthy life.

The results of the health screening demonstrated that, while some farmers had increased BMI and high blood pressure, there was also good news for farmers, with only 10% of individuals screened being smokers, compared to 23% in the general population.

The most important result from the campaign is to highlight the importance of heath awareness through health screening.

– Dr David Morris, Full Health Medical