Fourteenth Annual Report

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Fourteenth Annual Report

Date of publication: December 2005

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Summary

Mihimihi
E ngā iwi, e ngā reo
E ngā karangatanga maha o
Ngā hau e whā, tenei te mihi
Atu ki a koutou katoa

The independence of the National Health Committee is vital today, just as it was when the committee was established as the Core Services Committee 13 years ago. This independence in a rapidly changing and often turbulent health sector has been as critical to its success as the high quality of its work.

A responsibility to provide advice, rather than report, to the Minister of Health, is a key to maintaining independence. The committee’s composition minimises capture by groups with particular interests.

The committee avoids isolation and keeps abreast of developments through close contact with the sector and the Ministry of Health in particular, via its individual members and secretariat. Visits to regional centres stimulate ideas and protect against reﬂ ecting a purely Wellington-orientated view of the health sector.

Advice to the Minister on highly contentious matters, including for example screening for prostate cancer orantenatal HIV screening, cannot please everyone. The committee’s advice, based on current evidence has, however, facilitated more reasoned debate and assisted politicians and funders of health services to make decisions about issues where they are confronted by often emotive but contradictory arguments.

The committee’s 1998 report The Social, Cultural and Economic Determinants of Health in New Zealand: Action to Improve Health, disturbed some politicians at the time because of its focus on wider determinants of health. However, since its release, the report has been the basis for extensive work within health and other sectors. It also served as the foundation for further reports on the determinants of health prepared by the Public Health Advisory Committee, which was established as a sub-committee of the NHC in 2001.

Given the time to draw on its own diversity of perspectives and range of knowledge, the committee has been able to propose new thinking in areas of quality improvement and new health interventions. It has also provided critical advice to Ministers faced with intense lobbying to provide funding for systems and technologies developed overseas but not necessarily appropriate for New Zealand.

Freedom from the imperatives and demands experienced by health funding and provider agencies has enabled the NHC to highlight gaps and deﬁ ciencies in the delivery of care, in particular to groups with limited ability to promote their interests, such as children, older people and people with an intellectual disability. The committee has taken particular pride in using its status and resources to advocate for those with an intellectual disability whose rights as individuals, let alone health needs, are largely ignored.

Leaving after seven years as a committee member and Chair, I believe the National Health Committee is even more relevant now than at the time of its establishment, providing truly independent advice within a health sector confronted with increasingly complex issues.

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This publication is available in Word and PDF format below:

Fourteenth Annual Report (Word, 468 KB)
Fourteenth Annual Report (PDF, 1 MB)

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Publishing information
Date of publication: December 2005

ISBN: 0-478-28510-8
ISBN: 0-478-28511-6

HP 4214