She led significant health reforms, including the Cartwright Inquiry recommendations and the Covid-19 vaccination programme.<\/p>\n
She was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2006 for her services to health administration.<\/p>\n
She worked for 30 years in the health sector, serving as Director-General of Health from 1995 to 2006, and briefly chaired Health New Zealand in 2023-24 after the resignation of Rob Campbell.<\/p>\n
Health Minister Simeon Brown said that, in all her various roles, Dame Karen brought a wealth of public health expertise.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe leaves a strong legacy of work to improve health outcomes for all New Zealanders.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn behalf of the Government and people of New Zealand, I extend our deepest condolences to Dame Karen\u2019s family and friends.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ian Powell, former director of the senior doctors\u2019 union, the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, said Dame Karen was a woman of high integrity.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe values she believes in are very good values. A strong sense of public health being a public good and being accessible.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was the sort of person who would never backstab or anything like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat she said to me in private meetings was never inconsistent with what she would say in a public forum or publicly. There might be a slightly different emphasis, but no inconsistency. And that always really impressed me.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said when dealing with someone over a long time in the health area, particularly someone in a leadership role, there was always going to be differences of view and disagreements but Dame Karen was always thoroughly professional.<\/p>\n
Dame Karen was also chief executive of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) for 14 years.<\/p>\n
She was 76.<\/p>\n
-RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She said the qualities that defined her career include professionalism, humility and a no-nonsense approach to getting things…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[26819,18919,2947,7126,128984,9787,1888,42,134,42551,43,1118,128983,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-212681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-26819","tag-aged","tag-dame","tag-dies","tag-directorgeneral","tag-female","tag-first","tag-headlines","tag-health","tag-karen","tag-news","tag-of","tag-poutasi","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}