Important
Find out about Healthy Families Hutt Valley, an initiative that aims to make us healthier.
About Healthy Families Hutt Valley
Healthy Families Hutt Valley is one of 10 Healthy Families NZ locations around the country. It is the only site led by a Council.
Our goal is for all New Zealanders to enjoy health promoting social and physical environments that enable healthy food and physical activity choices, being smokefree, drinking alcohol only in moderation and increasing mental health, resilience and wellbeing.
How it works
We look at how the systems that influence our everyday lives and the environments we live in play a role in our health and wellbeing.
Our role is to drive local change by connecting people and organisations that can create healthy change. We support their leadership, enable them to take action and implement initiatives to demonstrate that together we can make the Hutt a healthier place to live, learn, work and play. Our mandate is to amplify the collective effort.
What we've achieved
In the five years since we started, together we’ve already made substantial changes to make the Hutt healthier:
- Increasing access to water as the drink of choice across our community. Council invested in seven new water fountains for our communities and we've committed to keep improving access to water in public spaces.
- Removing unhealthy sponsorship in sport through our Player of the Day rewards. Sports organisations that promote water as their drink of choice can reward their players with free access to 22 pools at six Councils across the Wellington Region, Horowhenua and Kapiti.
- We're working on a project to understand the relationship between food and the people of Wainuiomata living their best life within their own culture, whānau, and community. The ultimate aim is to make food more accessible and affordable, to help the community eat healthy kai often.
- Council now has one of the most comprehensive smokefree outdoor public places policies in New Zealand. We're showing strong leadership and contributing to a Smokefree Aotearoa by 2025.
- We aim to reduce alcohol related harm through recent updates to Lower Hutt's alcohol bylaw and local alcohol policy.
- We've partnered with the Human Resources Institute of NZ: Hutt Valley branch. Together we’ve established a Workplace Wellbeing Special Interest Group, brought the WorkWell programme to the Hutt Valley, and we were key partners in the development of Good4Work.
Find out more
Visit the Healthy Families Hutt Valley website or Facebook page.