There were 25 finalists celebrated on the night who were nominated under the categories Family, Pet, Lifestyle, Personal and Wellbeing, along with a People’s Choice winner and an Overall Winner.

The night’s top award went to Rebecca Gawthorne for her blog, Nourish Naturally.

Rebecca was awarded Overall Winner and won the Wellbeing category award.

Rebecca’s blog takes her clinical experience as a dietitian and nutritionist and helps to promote a realistic and achievable approach to healthy eating and nourishing your body naturally.

Rebecca was extremely honoured to be recognised for this year's Bupa Blog Awards .

“I was so excited for the Bupa Blog Awards. It was such a nice surprise to be a finalist and I definitely wasn’t expecting to win.

A record number of more than 16,000 people voted for their favourite blog across all categories for the People’s Choice Award.

Calley Gibson of Life of Pikelet took out the People’s Choice Award and Pet category for the amazing work as Australia's premier Rescue Ambassadog.

Life of Pikelet challenges the stigmas associated with rescue dogs and has rehomed over 50 foster siblings and assisted with the rehoming of hundreds more.

Calley said that winning two awards tonight was a massive surprise and she is looking forward to working with Bupa and other bloggers next year.

"I was expecting to come away with two sore feet - not two awards!

“I’m very excited to be able to become a part of such a great community and gain further support, knowledge and networking. It'll be great to experience this with people that understand and know what I’m doing," she said.

Angie Maddison from The Little Mumma took out the top prize for the Families category for her blog.

Angie is a mum of three and writes beautifully and candidly of her family’s experiences in a relatable, warm and authentic way.

The Lifestyle category winner was Jemma Mrdak for her blog A Stylish Moment for women on a path of confidence, creativity and ultimate style. It's a go-to for all things wellness and lifestyle for women.

Personal category winner for this year is Annie Love from Mumma Love.

She’s a mum to three boys, and navigates parenthood with Leukaemia, Down syndrome and grief through her blog. The beautifully candid blog is all about family, grief, rollercoasters and all the love stories woven in between.

Congratulations to all the 2018 Bupa Blog Award finalists and winners!

Jenny Yuen, Bupa Marketing Content Planner and judge, said it was tough competition and hard to judge and select winners for each category this year.

"It was incredibly difficult to judge and select this year's winners but we loved everything from their amazing writing to their unique perspectives on what it means to live healthier, happier lives.

"All our winners do incredible things for their online communities, and we're so pleased to be able to recognise and celebrate them," she said.

This year was the fifth year of the Bupa Blog Awards, recognising people outside of Bupa who have a strong influence on their community’s health and wellness.

This talented group of award winners will be invited to join Bupa’s exclusive influencer program, with free webinars, workshops and insights from those who have successfully navigated the blogger and influencer space.

They’ll also receive opportunities to work with Bupa on marketing campaigns throughout the year.

To help grow their influencer platform to improve the health and happiness of their online community, winners from each category have been awarded $1,000.

Our People’s Choice winner, Life of Pikelet, takes away $2,000 and $3,000 goes to our overall winner Rebecca Gawthorne for her blog Nourish Naturally.

Find out more about the awards and all our fantastic Bupa Blog Award finalists on the Blue Room.

#BupaBlogAwards

UP NEXT:

Today Tonight Adelaide: Bupa Blog Awards 2018

2018 Bupa Blog Awards finalists announced

2017 Bupa Blog Award winners announced

Bupa Blog Awards finalists announced for 2017

For those who don’t know; Kids Helpline is Australia’s only free, private and confidential 24/7 phone and online counselling service for young people aged 5-25.

I’m bursting with pride that we can play a part to support a service so important for the wellbeing of Australian kids and families.

Experienced Kids Helpline counsellors, Jessica and Tony, shared their insights into how young people feel about bullying and anxiety, and provided valuable ideas and support for our parents and carers in the room, me being one!

For anyone out there who’d love to get the ball rolling, our Bupa Family Challenge gives you free and fun weekly inspiration, to make the most of the everyday moments to talk, connect and improve family wellbeing.

And for those with kids in primary school, check out the Kids Helpline Wellbeing at School program.

Thanks to Bupa’s support, the free program connects over 10,000 primary school students across Australia to personalised virtual classroom sessions covering topics like bullying, resilience, friendship and safety.

Kids Helpline is Australia’s only free, private and confidential 24/7 phone and online counselling service for young people aged 5 to 25 – call 1800 55 1800 or visit kidshelpline.com.au

October is Mental Health month and I’m so proud to be part of an organisation that connects our customers and our people to better health and wellbeing.

Written by Jane Power, Chief Marketing and Customer Officer at Bupa A&NZ.

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Have a caring conversation this R U OK? Day

The Bupa Blog Awards were launched back in 2013, as a new way to share Bupa’s health and care expertise to a wider audience. Five years on, it’s become one of Australia’s most recognised blog award programs.

Alex McDonald, Head of Content and Social at Bupa Australia told Today Tonight Adelaide that it has given Bupa an opportunity to source local talent.

“The blog awards give such a beautiful opportunity for people to recognise their favourite bloggers and to give them that recognition they deserve for all of their hard work.

“There are more than 20 million health and wellness searches every month on Google.

“What we saw was a real opportunity - not for Bupa to provide all the answers but to source local influencer talent to help people connect to their health queries,” said Ms Mcdonald.

Sally O’Neil, the self-confessed fitness fanatic and health food lover created her own blog called the Fit Foodie.

O’Neil shares recipes, reviews and real life stories which have been turned into a cook book. Her blog is now up for a Bupa Blog Award under the category of wellbeing.

Categories for the award include wellbeing, lifestyle, family, personal, and pets with a peoples choice winner and an overall winner.

Find out more here.

Read more about the Bupa Blog Awards:

2018 Bupa Blog Awards finalists announced

2017 Bupa Blog Award winners announced

Bupa Blog Awards finalists announced for 2017

We know that many of our customers are relying on us to find ways to help reduce the cost and improve the quality of healthcare across the country. It’s an innovation challenge that we accept and it drives us every day.

Customers are quite clear. They expect us to be working with GPs and specialists to ensure transparency of information to enable patients to make more informed decisions about their insurances treatment and methods of prevention.

And while we know that the benefits for the community rest in strengthening innovation between health companies such as Bupa, government, care providers and patients, we need to do everything we can to foster our own culture of innovation.

At the heart of that is our purpose of helping people live longer, healthier, happier lives. It’s what motivates our 20,000 people and is inspiring them to develop new ways to care for our customers.

It’s what led to innovation examples such as our Person First approach to Aged Care and our soon to open Bupa Therapy centre that’s using human centred design to meet customers’ needs in disability care. It’s been achieved through people moving from a “wish we could” mindset to one that asks, “so how do I get it done?”

As a Bupa leadership team, we’re constantly asking ourselves: “how are we giving our people time to think and the power to act?” Can we channel the approach of companies like Netflix who have been nimble enough to harness changing technologies to quickly adapt and meet consumer needs.

Are we trimming old, unnecessary processes to let our people do the best job possible and respond quickly to our customers’ needs and wants?

What we do know is that ingraining innovation into an organisation starts at the top through trust in our people, fostering collaboration, accountability, and also being prepared to fail.

Innovation can seem like a huge transformational undertaking for big organisations, but it needn’t be scary. It’s been said that it takes roughly six months for a culture to permeate a person’s way of working, but these collaborative behaviours and mindsets are what leads to more innovative and efficient processes.

From our perspective, nurturing innovation in our business is key to building a better healthcare system and ultimately improving quality of life for all Australians.

Visit and connect with Jane on Linkedin here

Read more from people working at Bupa

Ms Power is currently Director of Brand and Health & Care Marketing for Bupa A&NZ, where she has guided the company's brand strategy and helped reposition the company from an insurer to a broad health and care company. She has also been Bupa's key global brand lead, helping all of its markets expand their brand presence, a role she will continue when assuming her new responsibilities on the Bupa A&NZ executive team.

She succeeds John Moore who is moving to Bupa's corporate centre in London to take up a new global customer service leadership role.

Ms Power joined the company in 2013 from Suncorp Group where she held roles including Executive Manager of Direct Life and Executive Manager of Wealth Management and Direct Risk. She also spent five years at MLC working across a range of roles including platform distribution. She was Head of Product and Marketing at Asteron, prior to the merger with Suncorp. She has an MBA from Queensland University of Technology.

Bupa People Director Naomi Attwood said: "Jane brings to the role a great depth of marketing and commercial experience at MLC, Suncorp and Asteron, prior to joining Bupa in 2013.

"More recently, Jane has passionately led our Brand strategy for the past two years, bringing the Bupa brand in our Australian and more recently New Zealand markets to life in a new way."

Commenting on her appointment Ms Power said: "I am incredibly honoured to be given this opportunity to lead a fantastic team that is doing such impactful work for our people and customers.

"As a marketing group we have worked very hard over the last few years to reposition Bupa as a broad health and care company. We know those efforts are making a real difference to the way our customers feel about the brand as a whole.

"For that reason our marketing activity will continue to focus on making that real difference in health and care, particularly delivering on the experiences that are important to our customers and people.

"Platforms such as Health Link are critical to this, helping us create greater engagement with consumers around health issues that matter to them.

"It's an exciting time at Bupa and I'm thrilled to be taking on the role," Ms Power said.

A new Director of Brand and Health & Care Marketing will be appointed in due course.