Part doctor, part diplomat, Ashley Bloomfield has been director general of health since 2018. As part of the team that led New Zealand through Covid, he inadvertently achieved greater exposure than a public servant might anticipate, with fans creating everything from tea towels to T-shirts, perfume, mugs and art, including one superfan who had Bloomfield's likeness tattooed on their calf. Bloomfield will step down from this role in July.
I spent the first six years of my life in Napier. We lived in Maraenui, which was a pretty deprived community but, as a young child you notice, but you also don't notice, because it's just what it is.
My father was from a farm in Ongaonga, and he left school at 15 to become a mechanic's apprentice in Napier. My father was a great believer in hard work and without any education beyond fifth form, he had two strings to his bow. One was in the motor vehicle industry, where he started on the shop floor as a mechanic and rose to become Chief Executive of Mitsubishi Motors. He also did compulsory military training, which I daresay he didn't enjoy, but he stayed in the Territorials, and rose through the ranks to become a lieutenant colonel and commanding officer of a Territorials battalion. He died in 2017, and my mother died in 2008. I still think of my parents every day and I've certainly felt their presence over the past couple of years.
My mother was from Napier and when she went to teachers' training college in Wellington, she fell in love with the city and was always looking for an opportunity to return. When she saw a job down there that suited Dad, she insisted he apply. Although he didn't get it, the company created another role for him.
We moved to Tawa, which was an old established town, but we lived in a new suburb. Being new, we could ride our bikes, and drive homemade trolleys recklessly around the wonderfully empty streets. There was also bush and farmland, and lots of earth-moving equipment, and it was a wonderful place to grow up.
As a primary school teacher, my mother was not a believer in separate intermediate schools, so when our school in Tawa moved away from Standard 5 and 6, she and Dad sent my older brother and me to Scots College. We were only meant to go for the two years of intermediate, but Scots really suited us. I was one of those kids who was into everything. The pipe band, the school play, rugby, cricket, choir. I played the guitar in a band. There were so many great opportunities and I'm really grateful to my parents for making the sacrifice to send us there.
Eventually mum became a teacher at Scots. I suspect there was a strong pull as that meant there was some help with our fees. Because mum worked, we were all expected to pull our weight around the house. My brother did the vacuuming, my sister did the dusting and ironing and I did toilets and bathrooms. So whenever I got frustrated with my kids - who've now left home - but if their bedrooms were untidy or there was stuff around the house, I'd say: "Toilets and bathrooms twice a week from age 14, you kids don't know how lucky you are".
Being at Scots also meant a lot of travel, and I took the bus for many years, but in those days you got your driver's licence a few days after turning 15. Dad's job meant he had a different car every six months and he generously allowed us to drive those cars while we were at school. Around that time, I also discovered hitchhiking and once I started living in Auckland to attend med school, that's how I'd travel home at the end of term and I had some hilarious lifts. Once I was picked up by an army vehicle heading south, and I sat in the back on two big boxes of grenades. On another lift, I was picked up in Paraparaumu in a Porsche, and I won't say how fast we were going, but we made it to Auckland in record time.
The pinnacle of my acting career was probably playing Curly in Oklahoma in my final year at Scots. I kicked it off by singing, "Oh What A Beautiful Morning". I wasn't always quite the right pitch but it was great fun, so when we moved to Wellington, I became involved with the local theatre troupe. When I played the lead in "Much Ado About Nothing", I was halfway through a soliloquy when I completely lost my lines. I was standing alone on stage, which meant no one could step in and cover, so I went back to the beginning and started again. Theatre taught me to think on my feet and contributed to building my confidence.
I didn't leave Tawa 'til I went to medical school in Auckland aged 17. I was in the halls the first year and I did what most students do, and enjoyed everything student life offered. In my second year, I became one of the two social reps for the medical school, which meant spending a lot of time planning and delivering a range of fun events. But going straight from school to finding myself on a pathway that was mapped out a long way ahead . . . after three years, I needed to take stock. I took a year off and hitchhiked around Europe for several months. At the start of that year, I wasn't sure I wanted to continue with medicine but by the end of the year, I was sure. In my fourth year, my grades improved and in the fifth year, once I met my brilliant wife, Libby - also training to be a doctor - my grades improved even more and we were married in our final year.
As junior doctors fresh out of med school, we knew we'd learn more in a smaller centre so applied to be house surgeons in Rotorua, Tauranga and Whangārei. We were accepted by Whangārei and in those days, there wasn't a lot of senior cover, so as newly minted junior doctors, there were some fairly hairy and scary moments but we learned a lot.
Every interaction with a patient is a story in itself. When I was in Whangārei, we'd operated on a patient and unexpectedly discovered that the patient had cancer. I was just a couple of weeks into my first run, and we were doing the ward round when the consultant said, "you can tell the patient what their diagnosis is". I said, "Sir, I'm just a very junior doctor and this is a significant diagnosis, I think it's more appropriate that you tell the patient". The surgeon said "okay, all right", and we swept into the room, pulled the curtains around us, whereupon the surgeon looked at the patient and said, "It's bad news, you've got cancer, if you have any questions, Dr Bloomfield will answer them". I might've been very green, but after that, I decided to take the lead on breaking bad news. That was an important lesson early in my career.
I enjoyed surgery but after about three or four years working in hospitals, I applied for a public health training scheme and was accepted to study for a Masters, during which time I also did some GP work. At the end of that, we moved to Wellington with our 5-month-old daughter. This gave me an understanding of how government policy is made, which seemed the best way to improve health for many people. We were meant to be there for six months - 25 years later, we're still here.
I spent about 15 years with the Ministry of Health. I had some incredible mentors, who coached me and gave me opportunities and allowed me to make mistakes. In 2011 we spent a year in Geneva with the World Health Organisation. That was wonderful, professionally and from a family perspective, then we returned to New Zealand when the opportunity arose to work in a new role for the three local DHBs, then as chief executive at Hutt DHB. It was great to work in the community I lived in and to be so close to the front line. I could talk directly to people, to clinicians, patients and whānau, to get their feedback on how we were doing. I loved working for DHBs, but when the director general role came up, I threw my hat in ring. I started four years ago on June 8, 2018.
This role is a great privilege because you get to set the tone of the organisation. Health is my lifeblood and I've had the opportunity to decide what this organisation should be, and to appoint a strong leadership team made up of people with strong values. That has paid dividends because a year and a half later, Covid-19 came along.
Looking back - and I've done a bit of that – I think about what I learned in those early days from a leadership and a life perspective. No one knew what was coming in January 2020. There were only a few hundred cases globally, with the vast majority in China, but we decided we needed to imagine it was going to be really big.
It was, and things moved incredibly quickly. By early February, we were giving advice about restricting travel from China. This had never been done before or even contemplated. As the virus spread we restricted travel from Iran. We were advising ministers in real time in order to support their decision-making, particularly around travel restrictions and subsequent border closures. We timed our interventions to give ourselves another week or two of breathing space so we could see what was happening in other countries. We used that knowledge to go hard because it was better to over-call it than under-call it and this became New Zealand's strategic advantage.
Suggesting we put the country into lockdown felt completely surreal and it still does. Even though there is a lot of pressure in the system now, it's clear we made the right decisions at the right time. Not only did we protect New Zealanders and our Pacific neighbours, we also protected our healthcare workers and the health system. By the time this year's Omicron outbreak arrived, we had high vaccination rates, treatment options and we had strong infection prevention protocols in place.
Early on, there were nights when I'd wake at 3am in a cold sweat. I felt this huge weight of responsibility, and I'd worry about giving the wrong advice. There was so much at stake and a huge potential for a really poor outcome. Those big calls, like closing the border were not taken lightly, but they proved to be the most effective way to protect our most vulnerable and buy us time. That period of time is still so vivid, and we're still feeling the economic and social impacts today.
It was intense for all of us, as we stayed home to save lives and the thing that connected us during that unique time was the daily stand-up at 1 o'clock. Every day people tuned in to find out what was happening and to get reassurance that everything was okay. It was a time of great uncertainty and unpredictability, so people wanted to know what was going on and because everyone found out at the same time, I think that offered a sense of unity.
Along with our geographical advantage, our elimination approach was successful for so long because the vast majority of Kiwis bought into it. There was no way it could be policed, but enough people decided to be kind and do what needed to be done. I'm a huge believer in kindness, which means acting in other people's best interests. The vast majority of Kiwis trusted and supported the response throughout that first lockdown. Fast forward 18 months, when you talk about division, there was, and remains, a group of people who are actively opposed. Those people have deeply held beliefs and people with strong beliefs will do whatever they think is necessary to act in accordance with those beliefs. Fortunately, they're a very small minority.
I didn't expect to catch Covid in Switzerland. I was fortunate to have very mild symptoms, but it was annoying as I was assiduous in my mask-wearing and public health behaviours. I wore an N95 the whole way on a long series of flights. It did seem ironic to go halfway around the world to get infected at a World Health Organisation meeting. But in Switzerland, people just don't use masks and you don't have to isolate if you're a case, although I did, of course. For me, that reinforces why we still have strong measures around mask use in public places, as well as stringent isolation requirements compared with most other countries.
The hardest thing about leaving this role is leaving behind so many fantastic people. There were days when it was tough to get out of bed and it was really stressful to come to work, but my co-workers got me through. They absolutely lifted me. This is why retirement is still a way off because the thing I like most about my job is working for people and working with people.
As for what's next, I have a few ideas but the only thing I can say for sure, is I'll take a decent break and spend quality time with family and friends. I'll travel and continue to be curious. Beyond that, I'm tossing ideas around with my wife. I've no firm plans beyond knowing I'm a committed public servant and whatever I do in the future will be health-related, in some kind of service role. There's also a huge pile of unread books beside the bed.
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