It’s my pleasure to introduce our updated newsletter to you. We hope you find it useful, informative and in an easy format to refer to and read.

The timing of the newsletter provides a perfect opportunity for me to wish you all greetings for the coming holiday season and to wish you and your families a peaceful, healthy and happy New Year 2019.

It has been my privilege to serve as Chief Executive of Crohn’s and Colitis NZ this year and to be part of what has been a successful and productive year. I would love to share some of the opportunities, successes and achievements that have been made.

This year has seen the development of our first strategic plan. Its attached for your reading and I would love to chat more with you personally about it. This is a milestone for CCNZ and will be what we base our future activities and the operations of the organisation on. The Board and I have worked hard to ensure that it provides a great mix of things to do ‘now’ and some stretch that will ensure a strong foundation for us in the future. As with all strategic plans it should be evolutionary and a dynamic plan – we would love your feedback! 

The strategic plan is broken down in to 6 areas or themes and we are making sure that everything we do contributes to these themes. it’s great to be able to test our work and measure what we do against what we have planned, and I am thrilled at some of the milestones we are achieving already.

Support is a core theme in our direction and we have determined that we will increase our effectiveness by co-opting two support group members to our board to build on this and to make sure we are connected and engaged with the grassroots of our organisation. I would like to congratulate and welcome Anna Scanlen for the Wellington Crohn’s & Colitis Support Group and Henriette Arends- Van Kessel from the Canterbury Crohn’s and Colitis Support Group to our board. We look forward to what this additional energy and expertise will bring to our support services.

Of note is the National IBD Care Working Group that rose from the IBD Burden of Disease report. I'm asked often what we are doing to advocate for pathways of care and more effective treatments that are consistent and equitable. This is the mechanism we are using to pursue our goals. Chaired by the Hon. Peter Dunne the steering group sets the work streams for our action group based on the recommendations from the burden of disease report. Happy to share this with anyone who is keen to know more and check out our website for the Burden of Disease report link.

One area that is important to us is specialised IBD Nursing as part of a dedicated clinical team and I’m so proud to announce the winner of our International Nurses Travel Award proudly supported by AbbVie. This award is for a $5000 international travel grant to further IBD Nursing education. 

This year we had a great response to this award and after an independent panel reviewed the applications and shortlisted five candidates we are pleased to announce that Megan Mackay of Hutt Valley District Health Board was the winner. Congratulations Megan and we look forward to hearing all about how this valuable education grant will assist in furthering care for patients in NZ through education. This grant wouldn’t have been possible without the generous support of the team at AbbVie.

January brings Camp Purple and we are so pleased to be welcoming an unprecedented number of 72 campers to Camp this coming year. This is only made possible by the inimitable perseverance of our volunteer workforce, our generous donors and those all around the country who have tireless raised funds to make this a possibility. Next year will see us moving to the next step in our event opportunities with #retreatpurpleNZ – retreat purple NZ will be a weekend retreat for young people living their lives with IBD. Funding permitting, we are planning for this to go ahead in November 2019.

Crohn’s & Colitis remains an invisible disease and the most important thing we all can do is to raise awareness everywhere we go. We are starting with the professionals who work with the diseases daily and have developed a terrific opportunity for IBD professionals to affiliate with CCNZ. There is mutual benefit from this alliance. Collegiality, collaboration and awareness are just three of many. Take a few minutes to read the attached professional membership brochure and feel free to pass this on to anyone you think will benefit from this great membership programme.

Collaboration between medical professionals and those with the diseases is paramount and as part of this ongoing encouragement CCNZ are promoting IBD Smart as a technology tool to assist this. A great article follows further in the newsletter. 

In closing I would like to acknowledge everyone who has supported Crohn’s & Colitis NZ over this last year. I would like to acknowledge our support groups, our sponsors, our Camp team and volunteers, Shavez Parkinson our Operations Project Manager and our board how work tirelessly and are incredibly committed to making lives more livable for those living with theses disease.

Merry Christmas and a happy, peaceful and health festive season to you all and to your families!

Warmest wishes

Viv