1 November 2021

The October CFNZ board meeting was an opportunity to reflect and celebrate our recent achievements to date but also to welcome some new faces including our incoming CE.

Firstly, we welcomed our newest board member Zac Fargher and our incoming CE Lisa Burns. Zac has recently returned from the UK and we look forward to the contribution he can make to helping progress our CFNZ organisation, including as a member of our newly formed People & Culture Committee. He is currently re-acclimatising to New Zealand from Waiheke Island and we look forward to welcoming him in person in the future.

Our new CE Lisa Burns officially starts her role from 1 November but took the opportunity for her to attend the meeting. We also took some time to recognise the incredibly valuable contribution Christine Perrins has made as interim CE for CFNZ over the last few months. This is in particular through her leadership of the advocacy programme focused on securing access for Trikafta. The great news for our CFNZ organisation is that Christine will continue to support our advocacy programme moving forward. 

We celebrated the success of the SWEATEMBER 2021 challenge last month.  The commitment across our community has led to an even stronger result than in 2020, with over $165,000 at last count. With more of us getting sweaty in 2021, it means we can make even more of a difference for our CF community. Thank you to everyone that contributed to this fantastic result.

It was noted that that review of our CFNZ organisation structure has now been completed. Given this, the board has agreed to proceed with a review of the constitution and we’ll be engaging the community in that process.

We all acknowledged the impact that COVID and lockdowns continues to have on our community, including PwCF and employees of CFNZ. We noted as a CFNZ organisation how we are responding to changes.

During the meeting though, we always had top of mind the exciting news from a day earlier that Trikafta has now been added to the priority list of medicines Pharmac would like to fund. This is a very important step in the process for securing funded access to Trikafta for the CF community. We also acknowledged those in our community who are willing to tell their own stories, which continues to make a significant impact on public awareness and the case for funding Trikafta in NZ.