The authors
David Meates & Carolyn Gullery
David Meates and Carolyn Gullery bring two perspectives on Canterbury’s health-system transformation: David as Chief Executive, and Carolyn as the executive responsible for planning, funding and decision support.
David Meates
David was Chief Executive of the Canterbury District Health Board across the full arc of the transformation, with overall accountability for the performance and direction of a health system involving some 18,000 people. He also served concurrently as Chief Executive of the West Coast District Health Board.
He led the system through the 2010–11 earthquake sequence, the 2019 mosque attacks and the first year of COVID-19, while sustaining a long-term direction through political change, financial pressure and repeated disruption.
Central to his leadership was the belief that no chief executive could direct a complex system into transformation. His role was to create clarity of purpose, build trust across organisational boundaries and enable leadership throughout the system. The Canterbury experience has since informed the work of health-system leaders in New Zealand and internationally.
Carolyn Gullery
Carolyn held executive responsibility for aligning Canterbury’s planning, funding, contracting, information and investment with the system’s shared direction. Working across the health system, she helped translate the ambition of integrated, person-centred care into the funding arrangements, partnerships and practical infrastructure needed to support it.
She was instrumental in developing Canterbury’s alliance-based way of working, its outcomes framework and the data and digital foundations that enabled organisations to make decisions from a shared view of the system. Her work helped shift the focus from purchasing activity within separate services to investing collectively in better outcomes for the population.
Carolyn has since worked as a health-system and digital-health consultant in New Zealand and internationally. She has advised on integrated care, commissioning, aged care and digital-health implementation, and continues to work with academic partners on relational contracting, alliance design and long-term public commissioning.
With contributions from
A foreword and an afterword from two respected voices
The book opens and closes with outside perspectives - one international, one from the centre of New Zealand public policy - on what Canterbury’s experience means for anyone trying to change a complex system.
Foreword
Professor Sir Chris Ham
One of the UK’s leading health policy thinkers and system leaders. Former Chief Executive of The King’s Fund and former Director of the Strategy Unit at the UK Department of Health, he has been a prominent advocate for integrated care, population health and system leadership, and was knighted for services to healthcare.
Afterword
Dr Graham Scott CB
One of New Zealand’s most influential public policy and economic reform leaders. A former Secretary to the Treasury, Chair of the New Zealand Health Funding Authority and Commissioner on the Productivity Commission, he has played a leadership role in shaping modern public sector reform and health policy, and currently chairs the Government’s Social Investment Board. He has advised governments and international agencies on public sector performance, governance and system transformation.
Speaking & advisory
Speaking & advisory work
Invite David or Carolyn, together or individually, for a keynote, board discussion or workshop. Sessions can explore integration, commissioning, digital health or leadership through crisis, shaped around your audience and organisation.