The South General Practice Conference & Medical Exhibition in August was another valuable opportunity for Migraine Foundation Aotearoa New Zealand to connect with more health professionals working within public health.
The 3 day conference was held at Te Pae Christchurch Convention Centre from 14–17 August 2025 and was attended by 879 doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, practice managers and other allied health professionals from throughout New Zealand.
Our co-founders Sarah and Fiona staffed an education stand with a range of resources, including factsheets about acute and preventive medications, information about anti-CGRP medications and patient brochures. We also had a series of myth-busting cards, to challenge some misconceptions people can have about migraine.
Our conversations were similar to what we had with health professionals at the Rotorua GP CME in June. Many health professionals had not only patients with migraine, but they lived with migraine themselves or had a family or friend with migraine.
And like we found during Rotorua, there were varying levels of knowledge about the latest migraine medications. Some health professionals knew about the new anti-CGRP medications available, and for those who didn’t, there was a real willingness to learn about them and understand how patients can access them.
Some health professionals knew about our charity and were already referring their patients to us. A few are even members of our online support group themselves. Those who didn’t know about us were delighted they can now send their patients to our website for patient-centric information and support.
And we were thrilled when we read the post-conference report that we were number 15 out of 118 exhibitors for the number of visitors! We knew we were busy but to see that health professionals we really keen to pop along to our booth to chat to us is testament to how common migraine is and the need for a migraine charity like ours.
Thank you again to our migraine community for supporting some of our attendance costs through donating to our GP conference fundraiser in May. Together with the connections we made at the Rotorua GP conference we had individual conversations with over 360 health professionals working within public health.
Our hope is that these opportunities to enhance the knowledge of health professionals about migraine will help improve the lives of people with migraine through better understanding of migraine disease as a disabling neurological condition, improved knowledge of migraine treatment options (medication and non-medication options) and minimising migraine stigma.
And we continue to welcome donations to support our work, either by becoming a regular donor or making a one-off donation. Find out more here
