The winner will be announced at the New Zealander of the Year Gala Awards evening in Auckland on 25 February, 2015.
The New Zealander of the Year Awards 2015 will also be honouring New Zealanders who have performed with distinction in five award categories. The semifinalists for those categories are: (see below for a full list of nominees).
– Metlifecare Senior New Zealander of the Year
– University of Auckland Young New Zealander of the Year
– Mitre 10 Community of the Year
– Sanitarium Innovator of the Year
– Kiwibank Local Heroes Awards
Dr Brian Broom MB ChB, FRACP (pictured, with his wife Alison) has had an notable and varied career as a health practitioner and pioneer in medicine. He is a Consultant Physician in Clinical Immunology at Auckland City Hospital and a New Zealand-registered psychotherapist.
His combined approach is well regarded within the medical community. His approach is holistic, looking at the mind to solve problems of the body. Across his career he has saved and improved the lives of thousands of patients in New Zealand.
He leads the unique post-graduate MindBody Healthcare Diploma and Masters Program at AUT University in Auckland.
Dr Broom has also written highly acclaimed books during almost 50 years in medicine, both for clinicians and the wider public.
As a finalist in the Metlifecare Senior New Zealander of the Year category, Dr Broom says, “of course it is an honour to have my work acknowledged. While my colleagues have aways been very supportive and positive about my work, I am aware that working as a I have has been against the current, so to speak. Being nominated for such an award has a pubic element, and while I may not seen the whole shift I envisage occurring in my lifetime, it does indicate that the concept is becoming much more widely accepted and adapted.”
The shift he speaks of is for the entire medical community to integrate a whole body approach to treating patients, rather than focusing solely on technology and medication. The terminology of his work is hard to pin down; Whole Person Approach is the closest, as opposed to Mind Body, which has more alternative connotations.
“I view it as inappropriate to divide people into either ‘mind’ or ‘body’ exclusively,” says Dr Broom. “I prefer a more multi-disciplinary approach – treating people by taking into consideration where they are in family, society and culture, as well as their physical symptoms."
It has been widely proven that children who are cared for physically, but without strong emotional bonds (e.g. in orphanages), display lowered immunity and increased illness than children raised in a strong loving family unit.
The same concept can be true for adults – those who carry emotional distress from the past, or who may be under significant emotional stress as adults may experience symptoms of illness that can be most successfully treated using both traditional medication and technology while attending to the emotional factors.
“One of the major predictors of health is a strong social network,” he says. “It is hard to say that it is so vital to children during their developmental phase, but then not continue that in adult treatment.
“When I treat a person, I don’t make the physical and emotional parts of a person deliberately different from one another, or only decide to treat one aspect. When it comes to chronic illness, there are often many factors that need to be honoured. Diseases are rarely entirely physical or entirely psychological in origin.”
Other categories
– Metlifecare Senior New Zealander of the Year:
Dr Brian Broom (Auckland); Gaylene Preston (Wellington); Kerry Bensemann (Christchurch); Betty van Gaalen (Kapiti); Kai Luey (Auckland); Bob Robertson (Queenstown); Roger Robinson (Auckland); Tong Too (Napier); Donald Sew Hoy (Auckland).
– University of Auckland Young New Zealander of the Year
Ben Dowdle (Auckland); Guy Ryan (Wellington); Tabby Besley (Wellington); Sebastian Hallum-Clarke (Wellington); Ella Yelich-O’Connor “Lorde” (Auckland); Jason Pemberton (Christchurch); Matt Strawbridge (Wellington); William Pike (Auckland); Te Rawhitiroa Bosch (Waikato); Henrietta McNeill (Invercargill); Malvindar Singh-Bains (Auckland).
– Mitre 10 Community of the Year
Paihia!; VisionWest Community Trust (Auckland); Kidscan (Auckland/NZ); Central Lakes Trust (Otago); Givealittle (NZ); South Alive Invercargill; Community Fruit Harvesting (Auckland/NZ); Pathway Trust (Christchurch); Rural Women New Zealand (NZ); Te Whangai Trust (NZ).
– Sanitarium Innovator of the Year
Peter Beck (Auckland); Professor Shaun Holt (Tauranga); Kayne Horsham (Wellington); Glenn Martin (Christchurch); BCS Group (Auckland); Chris Rodley (Nelson); Neville Jopson (Dunedin); Pat Martin (Christchurch); William Palmer and Peter Beguely (Auckland); Peter Stothers (Auckland).
– Kiwibank Local Heroes Awards
Amy Burke (Christchurch); Billie Jordan (Waiheke Island); Donald Rogers (Auckland); Helen Davidson (Roxburgh); Helen Henderson (Lower Hutt); Trevor Clarke (Auckland); Talitha Vandenberg (Paihiatua); Dame June Mariu (Auckland); Peter Willsman (Queenstown); Steven Parkinson-Loane (Christchurch).