Dr Yvonne Anderson, a Senior Research Fellow at the Liggins Institute was among the finalists who whooped, cheered and teared up listening to the stories of the wāhine toa who gathered at Sky City Convention Centre on Wednesday night for the Women of Influence Awards 2018.
The annual awards, sponsored by Stuff and Westpac, had an extra resonance this year as they fell in Suffrage Week. Governor General Dame Patsy Reddy opened with a warm but sobering speech. She recalled once thinking that given time and the increasing presence of women in male-dominated fields such as law, things would change, but she now believes that equity requires action.
Dr Yvonne Anderson, a Senior Research Fellow at the Liggins Institute and paediatrician at Taranaki District Health Board was a finalist in the “Innovation and Science” category, which was won by Professor Wendy Larner, Provost at Victoria University of Wellington.
Dr Anderson helped develop Whānau Pakari, a pioneering healthy lifestyle programme for kids and teens with obesity, designed to take healthcare out of hospitals and into people’s homes and communities, and to destigmatise and de-medicalise a very personal condition.
She embedded a clinical trial in the service, currently only offered in Taranaki, and found after 12 months improvements in cardiovascular fitness and quality of life and a modest reduction in weight status, which was doubled in the participants who attended more than 70 percent of weekly sessions. This reduction shifted some of the children out of the “obese” BMI range and into the “overweight” or “normal weight” ranges.
