Being appointed to Whanganui District Health board showed he had the Health Minister's confidence - now Stuart Hylton wants to test the confidence of region voters.
He was appointed to the board in 2014 when member Michael Laws stood down. A Whanganui District Council employee, his background was in environmental health and policy.
He said there was no guarantee he would be appointed for the next three years. Having invested nearly three years in learning the complexities and competing needs of the health system, Mr Hylton wants to stay on the board and use that knowledge.
He 's enjoyed the governance aspect and has special interests in cancer and its follow-up services, urology and children's health.
"The children's health service is grossly underfunded as a national programme and very important in terms of investing in our future," he said.
Whanganui's is a small board that performs well on national indicators. He said it needs to make alliances with Mid Central and other region health boards, in order to maintain services here and follow-up services elsewhere.
"We won't be subsumed by Palmerston North through the alliance. We have to share services to survive as we are, and to get services we can't afford or attract to Whanganui."
He likes the board's recent policy of listening to patients' stories. Now he says it needs to act on what it learns from them.