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The PHA – an informed, collaborative and strong advocate for public health.

Public Health Champion 2011  –  Dallas Honey

According to 2011 PHA President Monica Briggs, Public Health Champion for 2011 Dallas Honey is well named.

"She is marked by her generosity – in the time and help she gives others, whether that is to the PHA, a young new public health practitioner, or one of her grandchildren."

Paying tribute to Mrs Honey at the Christchurch Public Health Association conference dinner in 2011, Ms Briggs said she was an indefatigable flaxroots worker who goes all out to improve the health of people in her region, particularly those caught behind the door when life's advantages are handed out.

Mrs Honey says she feels very humbled to receive the award.

"When I think of those who have won this before me, it really is massive. You just do your work and don't expect it to be recognised in such a way."

Dallas Honey started out as a nurse, but hadn't exactly been bursting with desire to be one.

"I was 17, my twin sister was going nursing. There wasn't a great range of career options so I sort of fell into it. I trained at what was then known as Grey Hospital between 1966 and 1969, under the old regime of training on the wards, rather than in the classroom. We had a lot of fun, my sister and I, because we are identical. There was plenty of confusion during our training – accidentally and on purpose!"

Dallas worked as a general nurse at Grey Hospital until she moved to the Waikato with her husband Brian and three sons in 1985. There she took a new turn, moving into health promotion with the Heart Foundation and later in the public health unit of the Waikato District Health Board.

Her role at the DHB has moved from a health promotion focus to one in wider public health including emergency management in primary and secondary care.

She now manages the Public Health portfolio within Planning and Funding at the DHB and has also recently picked up the role of managing the Healthy Eating Healthy Action programme.

Ms Briggs says Dallas Honey really walks the talk of public health.

"She excels at building relationships due to her long commitment to health promotion, and she goes all out to encourage and mentor new practitioners, especially Māori and non-medical public health workers. But she is also a great challenger, questioning the status quo and speaking up when someone needs to ask the questions that have to be asked."

Dallas says that questioning is about making sure that decisions are not disadvantaging some groups.

"Sometimes our decisions have to be based on funding, but if they aren't we need to pause and think about the effect they will have on people who may already be struggling."

She says her public health passion is in trying to narrow the gap between the health status of people who are more advantaged and that of those who are less advantaged.

"While there will always be those who seem to be more or less favoured by circumstances, we always need to be thinking about the actions we can take so those who are relatively 'unfavoured' are affected as little as possible by that."

Dallas is also quite an environmentalist. She thinks of her six grandchildren and what people of her generation will leave them in terms of a physical environment.

"There are the public health things, of course, like clean water and clean air, but it is also about what we can do now for the long-term, even if it is the small, routine things like recycling."

She also thinks about what sort of social environment she will leave her grandchildren.

"That's what drives me to do what I can to achieve equity between the various populations of New Zealanders."

Read the PHA's media release, 1 September 2011.