Swap2win Campaign
The Swap2Win campaign is a community-focused initiative that promotes healthy and active lifestyles within Counties Manukau to combat the growing epidemic of Type 2 Diabetes in our community.
To campaign began in 2007 get our Counties Manukau community involved in simple changes to work together to stop obesity.
Stage 1 Healthy Swaps and Community Engagement:Letting people know that if we work together we can stop obesity
The campaign focus began by raising the awareness about obesity, which is a major risk factor in developing Type 2 Diabetes and encouraging a community response to the problem.
The campaign worked on two levels; providing tips to support families to swap to healthier lifestyles and highlighting stories of people in the local community who are already supporting each other to swap to healthier lifestyles to inspire others to do the same.
Some simple swaps for a healthier lifestyle:
Swap from dark blue milk to light blue milk
Swap from fizzy drink to water
Swap from takeaway meals to home made dinners with veges
Swap from sitting on the couch to going swimming
These are things we call all do! We can encourage our families, friends, workmates, employers, the people in our Churches and our community organisations to make simple changes which will help us have a healthier community. By working together we can do it!
Team up with your children and family, your friends and work mates. Together you can help and encourage each other to stay on track with the swaps you are making. The groups in these photos are just some examples of people who are helping each other swap to healthier lifestyles in Counties Manukau. Join them in stopping obesity. Let's do it for our kids.
Our Franklin Marae are Swapping 2 Light Blue Milk
At our Franklin Marae, we want our tamariki, whaanau and future generations to have whaanau ora with healthier and more active lives.
Educating our tamariki and whaanau about healthier lifestyle choices, leading by example and supporting them to make the change has become our priority. Our journey focuses on making a number of small changes to help support our community's kaupapa to eat healthy food and be more active. One easy way to reduce fat in the daily diet of our whaanau and marae is to make the swap to light blue or green top milk.*
If our Franklin Marae can swap to stop obesity you can too!
*Light blue or green top milk is not a suitable milk for children under two years.
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The Mangere Methodist Church is Swapping 2 Smaller Portion Sizes
We at Mangere Methodist Church want our children and future generations to be healthy, active, wholesome and prosperous.
Educating our community in healthier lifestyle choices, leading by example and supporting them to make the change has become a priority for our Church. Our journey has focused on making a number of small changes and they have really made a big difference. We now have healthy food at Church events and have even decreased the amount of food provided by one whole table! Not only is this encouraging our people to eat less but we are also saving a lot of money. The underlying principle behind our swap to stop obesity is "Believe it, live it, do it and preach it."
If our Mangere Methodist Church can swap to stop obesity, you can too!
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The Takanini School Community is Swapping 2 Water
Together the parents and teachers of Takanini School are nurturing healthy, active and confident children.
Students, staff and parents are committed to making our school a healthy place.
By teaming up we have made water the drink of choice in our school. Healthy home made sandwiches and fruit are now our students' lunch of choice. By making these simple swaps our school lunches are now healthier, tastier and cheaper. We are all really proud of the changes that we have made. What's more, we are really excited to see our students' health improving and know they are better prepared for learning.
If our Takanini School community can swap to stop obesity, you can too!
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The Kumfs Team in Mangere is Swapping 2 Physically Active Lunch Breaks
By working together our team at Kumfs is becoming more active and healthy. This is a win for us and it's a win for the company.
We are really committed to supporting each other to swap to healthier lifestyles. Today we have people from the factory floor, dispatch and management making the most of the many options to stop obesity. Lunchtime exercise is a regular feature in our workplace and company teams take part in touch rugby, dragon boat racing, Feet Beat and Round-the-Bays. Deliveries of fish and chips are a thing of the past and we now have free fruit available each week. For some of the team, regular weigh-ins have become an important part of tracking our progress. For all of us, the support and encouragement from our workmates has really made a difference and made it easier to swap to healthier lifestyles.
If our Kumfs Team can swap to stop obesity, you can too!
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Stage 2 Raising the awareness of Type 2 Diabetes as an issue, and as an often preventable condition
Diabetes is often called the silent disease. It is not a condition that our community has talked about much. For some communities people have thought that it is just something that will happen, but actually it can often be prevented or delayed. We do not need to have the numbers of people in our community suffering form this condition.
Type 2 Diabetes is sometimes referred to as a lifestyle disease. The lifestyle that we have: how and what we eat, how much exercise we get, even at a very young age, can lead to an increase in the risk of developing this condition. Changing our lifestyle can reduce our risk of Type 2 Diabetes!
Some of the things that lead to a high risk of Type 2 Diabetes include: Eating a lot of fatty or sugary foods and drink, including high sugar fizzy drinks; eating too much food for your body and not getting enough regular exercise.
The rate of Type 2 Diabetes is increasing all over the world. In Counties Manukau there are already 27,000 people diagnosed with diabetes. Our region has the highest rates of Type 2 Diabetes in New Zealand. It doesn't need to be this way!
 Type 2 Diabetes is a serious condition which gets worse over time. We often hear that people would have taken better care of their bodies if they had realised what could happen to them.
 Diabetes is a condition that makes it hard for your body to turn the food you eat into energy. In diabetes, there is too much glucose (sugar) in your blood and over time high levels of glucose in your blood can have very serious effects on your body. The serious effects cause an increased risk of heart attacks and stroke, kidney failure, nerve damage resulting in loss of eyesight, foot ulcers, unhealed wounds possibly leading to amputation of limbs.
Heart attacks, stroke, amputations, blindness and other complications of Type 2 Diabetes give people the reason why they need to make changes to their lifestyle now.
We are asking people in Counties Manukau to make changes to their lifestyles for themselves and their families because "It doesn't need to be this way!"
Click here for more information on "What is Diabetes?"
Stage 3 Introducing ways of reducing the risk of Diabetes
Counties Manukau region has the highest rates of Type 2 Diabetes in New Zealand. For some of our community, particularly Pacific people, Maaori and people of South Asian ethnicities the rates of developing Type 2 Diabetes are very high indeed.
There are ways that we can reduce our risk and our families risk of Type 2 Diabetes. The most important ones are EAT RIGHT, KEEP ACTIVE and HAVE A HEALTHY WEIGHT. How we do these things for our own families and communities might be different than what our neighbours do. The important thing is to find ways to having a healthier life for you and your family, and start now!
The changes we need to reduce the risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes, or to delay the onset or better manage Diabetes are:
 Eat right
Eating healthily means having 5 or more services of fruit and vegetables everyday, reducing the amount of saturated fats that we eat and reducing the amounts of high sugar foods and drinks. It is also a good idea to choose lean cuts of meat, fish and high fibre or whole grain foods.
 Be physically active
It is recommended that adults should be physically active at least 30 minutes a day, most days a week (enough to build up a sweat), and children should be physically active at least 60 minutes a day, most days a week. Keeping physically active is a really important way of keeping healthy throughout our lives.
Have a healthy weight
A healthy weight is a very important in reducing the risk of Type 2 Diabetes. Being overweight or obese is one of the major contributing factors leading to Type 2 Diabetes. Waist circumference measurements can be a good indicator to let you know whether you need to reduce your body weight. For women if your waist is greater than 88cm and for men if your waist is greater than 102cm then you have increased risk of Type 2 Diabetes, heart diseased and some cancers. Reducing the size of your meals is a good way to reduce weight gain.
Click here for more things you and your family can do to reduce the risk of Type 2 Diabetes
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