Top Wellingtonian leads on vaccination
Teresea Olsen, general manager of health and social services at Kōkiri Marae at Seaview near Petone, was named Wellingtonian of the Year earlier this month. “Welly” awards creator and sponsor The Dominion Post reports that Mrs Olsen’s supreme award came after a win in the community service category.
Mrs Olsen helped run Wainuiomata Marae as a vaccination centre, and ran the “Delta bus”, which drove into the region’s lowest-vaccinated area, Stokes Valley, and vaccinated 99 people on its first day, the newspaper reports.
Tū Ora names new chair
Wellington regional PHO Tū Ora Compass Health has appointed Debbie Chin as chair, and Island Bay Medical Centre GP-owner and long-serving Tū Ora board member Richard Medlicott as deputy chair. Ms Chin is the independent chair of Waikato DHB’s finance, audit and risk committee.
She served as Crown monitor to the Capital & Coast DHB board prior to being the DHB’s chief executive from 2013 to 2018. She formerly led Standards New Zealand. At Tū Ora Compass Health, Ms Chin replaces Larry Jordan.
Practice manager snapped up by PHO
Auckland PHO has appointed Ashley Hulmeas its rātonga kaiwhakahaere chief operations officer. Until recently practice manager at Hobsonville Family Doctors in west Auckland, Mr Hulme has held management roles in primary care since 2014, when he joined the then Nirvana Health Group, now Tāmaki Health. He is a Foundation Standard assessor for the RNZCGP. Mr Hulme, who comes from a medical family, has been quality improvement lead for the Safety in Practice programme, and played a part in over a dozen quality improvement initiatives to more than 45,000 patients.
Public health doctor-MP is promote
New Zealand Child and Youth Epidemiology Service founder and public health medicine specialist Liz Craig is the new parliamentary private secretary for health, working alongside ministers with health-related portfolios. Dr Craig, a Labour list MP, was a member of the health select committee between November 2017 and May this year, and for the past 18 months was chair. She also serves on the pae ora legislation committee. The new chair of the health select committee is Labour’s MP for Palmerston North, Tangi Utikere.