INTERVENTION: Clinical pharmacist and Hawke's Bay District Health Board candidate Julia Wilson doesn't want to pick up the pieces of an ageing population meeting an unprepared health sector. PHOTO/SUPPLIED
Clinical pharmacist Julia Wilson is running for a seat on the Hawke's Bay District Health Board to effect change ahead of the region's ageing population.
"We have an ageing population and my generation is responsible for seeing the healthcare system through it," she said.
"In the next 15 years the number of people who are over the age of 65 will double.
"I want to get involved before the ageing population hits the health sector and I have to deal with it.
"The number of people like myself who are working and paying tax will stay the same and we will actually have our own families to take care of.
"So there is huge pressure going to come on to the health system.
"I don't want to be in a position where I haven't been involved helping to connect everything properly, and then I have to go and be picking up the pieces."
"I want to to help make connections better and make things a bit more efficient."
She said she lived in Wakarara, 10km inland from Central Hawke's Bay's Tikokino and came from a farming family.
She works as a locum pharmacist in Waipukurau and Napier.
The Health Board was "on the right track" investing in social networks, e-prescribing platforms and primary-care solutions "but what matters to me is the quality of everything - how it gets done. That's why I am getting involved."
She said through better use of healthcare in the community the burden on hospitals would be relieved.
Integrated healthcare networks made for quicker services closer to home.
She has worked overseas and been involved in aged residential care, conducting medicine reviews.
She said as a rural community pharmacist she had experience working within the framework of the District Health Board so understood how to navigate it.
"Mine is not a finance background, it is a health background. I think you need a balance."