Aimee Bishoprick, healthy living advisor at Marton Pharmacy near Middlesbrough, believes that a healthy mind is as essential as a healthy body, and it is this approach that led to her being crowned winner of the Healthy Living Advisor Award.

Aimee’s first step in her quest to provide mental health support to her local community was to organise a number of campaigns raising awareness of mental health issues, including “Time to Talk” sessions for pharmacy customers. These have proved so successful that she is now on the list of individuals who are able to refer patients to Middlesbrough Mind and the local NHS counselling service, and over recent months she has been participating in a study run by Durham University to support those with sub-threshold depression.

In addition to all this activity, Aimee still finds time to highlight physical health problems, although sometimes this is achieved outside her normal working hours. One case in point was running a session on breast cancer screening at a local Mother’s Union group, which proved so successful that she was invited back to do a second session on bowel cancer. While this isn’t the easiest of topics to embark upon, Aimee tackled it with humour, illustrating bowel changes with home- baked cakes.

A talk on nutrition at a mother and toddler group was so popular that the resulting queue to sign up for Healthy Start vitamins extended beyond the pharmacy door, and Aimee has also been into a local school to highlight the importance of sun safety. The impact of her presentation was such that many pupils produced posters on the topic, which Aimee then displayed in the pharmacy, making the children feel part of the local health community.

Scratchcards are a popular way of raising awareness of alcohol consumption, but Aimee took things a step further by coming to work in torn clothes spattered with lentil soup that looked a lot like vomit, messy hair and an empty bottle in her hand. Being the living embodiment of “you wouldn’t go out looking like this, so why come home looking like this” was an imaginative way to spark conversations on the topic with young and old alike. Aimee is also a stop smoking advisor and leads on sexual health and other public health schemes. 

Pharmacist and managing director of Marton Pharmacy Michael Maguire says: “Aimee has shown a remarkable ability to engage not only individuals, but the whole community, showing enterprise and innovation and encouraging a team approach to healthy living. I can delegate campaigns to Aimee and then witness first-hand the difference they make to the health and wellbeing of the whole community.”

The judges had nothing but praise for Aimee, with Deborah Evans, managing director of Pharmacy Complete and healthy living pharmacy guru, summarising it nicely: “Aimee has done an outstanding job engaging with the community and responding to local health needs. A fantastic health champion.”