About Juno | Vibrant Health Advocates

Who we are

Founded by the community, for the community

Vibrant Health Advocates – Juno is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation based in Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire. We exist because geography should never determine the quality of support a person receives for a long-term health condition. Fraserburgh sits at the tip of the Buchan peninsula, more than forty miles from the nearest major hospital and specialist outpatient services.

For the 13,000 people who call the town home — many of them older, some without access to a car, some working shifts on vessels or in fish processing — regular journeys into Aberdeen for routine health guidance are simply not practical.

Our approach is built on the evidence base for structured self-management support, adapted carefully for a community we know well. We are not clinicians and we do not provide medical advice or treatment; we are trained, accredited health coaches who help people understand their conditions, use their prescribed care plans effectively, and build the confidence and skills to manage day-to-day challenges at home.

Three Juno trustees in discussion at a community room table in Fraserburgh

Juno trustees, Fraserburgh

Partnerships

Integrated with local health and social care

We work in close partnership with local GP practices, NHS Grampian's long-term conditions nursing team, and Aberdeenshire Council's community health and social care partnership to ensure our support is well-integrated and appropriately signposted.

Every person who comes to Juno receives a named health coach who gets to know them, their condition, their family situation, and their goals over time. We believe in continuity: the same voice on the end of the phone, week after week, builds the kind of trust that makes honest conversations about health possible.

Our service is entirely free to all Fraserburgh and Buchan residents. We are funded through a combination of grants from the Scottish Government's Third Sector Health Fund, the Robertson Trust, and generous individual donations from the local community.

Our story

From a community conversation to a trusted charity

Juno grew out of conversations that took place in Fraserburgh's community centre in late 2017.

A small group of residents — several of them living with long-term conditions themselves, others who worked in local health and social care — met to talk honestly about what was missing. The group heard the same story again and again: people who understood their diagnosis in theory but felt lost in practice between appointments; people who had stopped attending reviews in Aberdeen because the journey had become too much; people who were frightened to call their GP surgery with what felt like a small question.

It was clear that the gap was not primarily clinical — local GPs and nurses were stretched but committed — the gap was in the day-to-day, ongoing, human support that turns a diagnosis into a manageable part of life rather than a source of constant anxiety.

The founding trustees registered Vibrant Health Advocates – Juno as a SCIO in 2018 and began delivering a small telephone befriending and health coaching pilot funded by a micro-grant from Aberdeenshire Voluntary Action. The results were modest in scale but striking in their impact: participants reported feeling more confident, less isolated, and better able to manage their conditions without unnecessary GP or out-of-hours contact.

Since then Juno has grown steadily, adding peer support groups, condition-specific workshops, and a dedicated digital self-management resource library. We remain proudly rooted in Fraserburgh — run from here, funded to serve here, accountable to this community.

Key milestones

2017

Community conversations in Fraserburgh community centre identify the gap in long-term condition support.

2018

Registered as a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation. Telephone coaching pilot launched with Aberdeenshire Voluntary Action funding.

2020

Peer support circles and condition-specific workshops introduced. Caseload grows to 150+ participants.

Now

Supporting 340+ people annually across 12 long-term conditions, with 2,800+ support contacts each year.

Our mission

What drives everything we do

Vibrant Health Advocates – Juno is dedicated to ensuring that every adult in Fraserburgh and the wider Buchan area who is living with a long-term health condition has access to free, personalised, and sustained remote support that enables them to understand their condition, manage it confidently at home, and live as full and independent a life as possible — regardless of whether they have a car, a broadband connection, or the ability to travel to a city for routine guidance. We believe that distance is not destiny, and that a well-supported person with a long-term condition is not only healthier but less likely to experience preventable crises, avoidable hospital admissions, or the creeping isolation that so often accompanies chronic illness in rural and coastal communities.

The team

Governed by the community it serves

Juno is governed by a board of three voluntary trustees who bring together expertise in community healthcare, financial management, and lived experience of long-term condition management.

Our trustees set strategic direction, ensure financial probity, and remain closely connected to the community we serve — two of the three grew up in Fraserburgh and all three use the NHS services our participants depend on. Day-to-day delivery is led by our small team of paid health coaches and a network of trained volunteer peer supporters, many of whom first came to Juno as people seeking support themselves.

M

Margaret Innes

Chair

D

Donald Fraser

Treasurer

C

Catriona Moir

Trustee