Kate Jarvis.
Kate Jarvis of Latrobe Health Services shares how fulfilling her work has become in collaborating with the Shane Warne Legacy and others, who are all passionate about raising awareness about our heart health.
Sep 17, 2023
“I can so clearly remember Shane Warne and Ricky Ponting signing my cricket bat as I stood at the barrier after a game at the SCG. That was the moment that my love for cricket – and Shane and Ricky – began,” shares Kate Jarvis, who now fulfils a crucial role in raising awareness about heart health, working with many people dear to Shane.
“As with most of the nation, I didn’t think we’d be farewelling the exceptionally talented Shane at the young age of 52. Nor did I think that today I’d be advocating for Australians to pay attention to their heart health as part of his legacy.
“Unquestionably, I’m doing some of the most meaningful work of my career. Especially as you’ll struggle to find someone who hasn’t in some way been impacted by a sudden heart attack. Shane’s death awoke a nation to their vulnerability almost overnight.”
“That was probably the moment we all understood the gravity of what we were doing...and the difference we could make.”
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Over the past 19 years, Kate has worked across regional NSW, Victoria and Sydney on marketing, branding and advertising roles for the health industry, broadcast media and the public sector. This has included top-tier public relations firms in government relations and consumer portfolios, working with global brands such as Kellogg, Unilever, Subway and Samsung.
“But my sense of purpose has never been stronger than in my role as the Head of Marketing and Business Development with Latrobe Health Services (LHS).
“Sadly, throughout my six years in the executive team at Gippsland’s homegrown health insurer, I’ve seen more members impacted by cardiovascular events than I ever wanted to see.”
Unfortunately, Kate’s experience isn’t an outlier. More than 43,000 Australians die from cardiovascular disease each year, and Gippsland has some of the worst cardiovascular health outcomes of any Australian region!
If dollars pull at your heart (or head) strings, cardiovascular disease is a leading cause of health care expenditure, with $1.45 billion spent on cardiovascular medications annually. It has been estimated that cardiovascular disease places an overall cost of $15.5B on the economy when you factor in the loss of productivity after myocardial infarction.
Seeing figures that high should be sufficiently alarming to have us all grabbing at our heart. So, let’s pause for a moment and take stock of the factors that influence your heart health: these include blood pressure, smoking, diabetes risk, weight and cholesterol. Please continue to regularly see your general practitioner; they’ll be your guiding voice on the levels of all these attributes.
Back to Kate. Two years ago, Kate’s team worked with SiSU Health and Wesfarmers API (Australian Pharmaceutical Industries Limited) to undertake a study in Gippsland that explored the burden of the unaddressed cardiovascular disease risk profile in the region. A goal of the study was to evaluate the acceptability of undertaking screening activities (i.e. checking your heart health) within routine regional and remote community activities and to determine whether we could get people to engage in their health, be proactive with their GP and have better knowledge of their heart health indicators listed above.
At this juncture, you may be questioning why Kate and the LHS team are so focused on the health of Gippsland’s hearts. Established in the region in 1950, the organisation is a not-for-profit health insurer. Understanding the health of their members and the community is important to them, as they support initiatives that improve their members’ health and that of the adjacent community. Building Maryvale Private Hospital is just one example of the health measures the LHS has undertaken.
“It makes considerable sense, with finite resources, to really go after one area that impacts our members and the community most. And so, our dream of playing a role in demonstrably moving the dial on heart health outcomes began,” explains Kate. And, with heart health in sharp focus, the team required a means to effect their desired change.
“I believe technology is the frontier of health care in Australia and, if designed effectively and used correctly, technology can support clinicians and health care workers in the important work they do.”
SiSU Health has developed a for-purpose health station that can test the factors impacting your heart’s health and provide you with your results immediately. As the advanced diagnostic device can be operated by a qualified pharmacist, they can rapidly provide you with key insights on your results, including advice on how to maintain a healthy heart and information on how to follow up with your GP should further action be required.
This approach has proven to be remarkably effective in catalysing life-changing action. For instance, pharmacists reported a 38-year-old Sale man called an ambulance immediately after his test. He was taken to the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne and underwent lifesaving surgery.
“That was probably the moment we all understood the gravity of what we were doing with having this technology available and the difference we could make,” says Kate.
Through early work in Gippsland, it was found:
— 84.6% of participants did not know they had one or more risk factors.
— 57.4% of those participants have now followed up with GP.
— 57.9% of participants who were at risk did not consider themselves at risk.
“Participants said that challenges in accessing GPs (a factor more common in regional areas) meant they weren’t always proactive in screening, but that they did like the technology we applied, and there was an acceptance from people that could use the approach present to check in on their heart health.”
The findings of the study were accepted by the Australian Journal of Rural Health and published and presented at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand.
“We’ve talked to the government about this program and presented it to health and insurance peers across the world at the International Federation of Health Plans Conference in Paris. But, the day this work became even more meaningful was the moment the Shane Warne Legacy contacted us wanting to work together to leave a legacy for Shane by preventing as many cardiovascular episodes as we could.
“At that moment, I knew we had a group of people as passionate as us about improving heart health, and that not just Gippsland was thinking about this issue now. Overnight, we had Australian and international people who were really tuning into their heart health. That’s powerful.”
On Boxing Day 2023, the team set up 24 machines inside and outside the Melbourne Cricket Ground and, over the four days of the rain-delayed Test match between Australia and Pakistan, nearly 8,000 people queued for their heart test. Alarmingly, more than 100 people needed immediate medical attention (again, please get a heart health check-up today!).
Now, there are almost 400 Priceline pharmacies across Australia with a testing machine, and you can check if your local pharmacy is participating in this program at shanewarnelegacy.com.
Kate’s team will be back at this year’s Boxing Day Test bigger than ever, providing as many Shane Warne Legacy Health Checks as possible. Ripping 708 wickets off 40,704 balls wasn’t enough for ‘ol Warnie, it seems – now, posthumously, he and the Shane Warne Legacy First XI are delivering life-saving diagnoses too.
This is a story of seeking out the very heart of a problem that is impacting your community, gathering as much information as possible on the issue at hand, then seeking out world-leading experts to collaborate on a potential solution. Given the immense repercussions of the problem, the dedication of the project team and the startling effectiveness of the solution developed, other influential change-makers, such as the Shane Warne Legacy, sought them out to amplify the impact. This is a story of how pursuing excellence in assisting your regional community expands to the creation of a program that benefits people Australia-wide.
In light of this, Kate concludes, “To the members of Latrobe Health Services, you’re the ones who make this possible. You care about people as much as we do.” And, you can see that for Kate, this local support continues to bowl her over.