When I left my teaching job at CRMEF last December, the Residents, Faculty, Staff and friends threw a going away party, and instead of a gift, took a collection of monies for me to use in some community health education projects here in Derby. This was a wonderful gift that greatly touched my heart. So when the opportunity came up to do a Men's Pit Stop here in Derby, we jumped at the chance.

The idea is based on research that shows, in the U.S. at least, that 88% of men have looked under the hood of their car in the last year, while only 60% have had any kind of health checkup.

So to get by around the problems of coming to a health clinic (full of women usually) for care, we take the care to the men, in the form of a "Pit Stop". In a short time the blokes can travel around each station, and get "run their car (body) through the pits".

We use automotive analogies for the various stations. For example, the Fuel Mixture station is a finger stick blood sugar test, and the Fuel Additives is a short alcohol abuse screening questionnaire. Exhaust is smoking, Shock Absorbers is emotional stress screening, and Radiators and Spark Plugs are "Men's Business" (safe sex, STDs, prostate, urine flow problems, etc.)

I've spent the last few weeks adapting this concept, originally developed in the Gascoyne and Pilbara regions of Australia to the Kimberly and Aboriginal Health concerns. Vicki helped me order "Pit Crew" shirts in the colors and with logos containing found in the Aboriginal Flag. We built "Work Orders" which each man carries through the pits on a clipboard. At each station, they are marked "Roadworthy" or "Work Needed", and at the end the doctor reviews it all and slaps either a Yellow Temporary Registration or Blue Certified Roadworthy sticker on the guy's shirt.

This last week we placed posters all over town. My 3 students and I each took a turn on the local radio station, 6DBY, at the noon program to explain the Pit Stop and talk about one or more aspects of good health practices for men.

Friday morning, the big day, we set up on the lawn in front of the Shire offices and opened for business. Our drivers cruised around town all day and gave men lifts to the Pits for checkups.












I was the "cleanup batter" at the end of the chain, and I learned a lot, spending the entire day doing motivational interviewing. Men here have little or no idea of proper nutrition, and underestimate the dangers of smoking.And all Australians, black or white, drink too much alcohol. James spent the day giving "DrinkCheck" questionnaires, and said that he had never understood what "one standard drink" was until doing the station. He really liked the chart in the government pamphlet- although it reminded me a lot of the aircraft identification charts my mom used as a plane spotter during WW2.

The turnout was rather sparser than we hoped, but we did cycle 19 men through the Pits, and had several alarming findings, including a gent with previously unknown severe proteinuria, and several with hypertension and high blood sugars. We had hoped for over 50 men, but our timing may have been off. (We set the date for a Pay Week when many people would be in town- however, Friday may not have been the best day because Centrelink pays out on Thursday and many of the men had been up all night drinking and partying the night before.)

But the great thing is that the concept is now all set up for DAHS, and we have all the materials and run through it once. We will plan on setting up more Pit Stops later in the year, and we've scheduled a time to take it "on the road" up the Gibb River Road in September, to the Aboriginal Communities there.

And as Narelle and I agreed while doing the extensive planning- if we find just one man with a preventable disease or death risk that we can change, then it is all worth it.
Click the photo below to see the album:

PitStop