Dr Penny Caldicott
President
Penny is a general practitioner with over two decades experience. In 2003 she established Invitation to Health, a medical centre that integrates the best of evidence based conventional and complementary medicine. “I have seen that patient care in our community is fragmented as doctors and therapists frequently work in isolation communicating only rarely with each other and, at times, with a mutual distrust of each other based on ignorance and fear. This situation can compromise patient care and is an added burden for the individual doctor/therapist who feels that they must somehow address their entire patient’s needs themselves. For these reasons, amongst many others, I became increasingly aware that we need to educate each other and create lines of communication between medical/health practitioners. We have been trained to work with a medical model based on chronic disease management, it is clearly time now to work towards a pre-emptive model of health care that aspires to both prevent chronic disease and accompany our patients back towards well being.”
Penny been a board member of a number of not-for-profit boards including the Central Coast Division of General Practice. She is passionate about supporting integrative doctors and therapists and is a clear and strong voice to guide the future agenda of Integrative Medicine in Australia and New Zealand.
Dr Tim Ewer
Vice President
AIMA New Zealand Board Representative
Tim has been working in integrative medicine for the last 25 years and has a health centre near Nelson, NZ. Prior to that he was a hospital physician for 10 years after gaining his medical degree and specialist qualifications in the UK. He has trained in a variety of modalities including nutrition, mind-body therapies, acupuncture, bio-energetic techniques, and environmental and hyperbaric medicine. He has been an advisor to WHO on natural medicine and to the NZ government on CAM. He has a long-term interest in exploring ways to bridge the different paradigms of East and West, and he is passionate in his support for AIMA and it’s role of integrating the best of biomedicine with the best of complementary medicine. This includes expanding AIMA’s role as a peak body for integrative medicine, encouraging research at both the grass-roots of clinical health care and working with academia, and making integrative medicine a highly useful and attractive option for young doctors and health professionals.
Scott Goold
Treasurer
Scott is a retail executive with more than 26 years industry experience. He has a unique history of working in financial services, health food retail and complimentary medicines. He is a strong entrepreneur with skills in Management, Start-ups, Business Development and Marketing Strategy.
Scott began his career with Citibank, focusing on delivering the groups global retail banking strategy to the Asia Pacific region. Since then, he co-founded the Venture integrity health group and managed the start-up and expansion of the groups health food retail footprint and Asian export business. Scott has been a non-executive director of Go Vita Distributors Ltd and is an executive director of Venture integrity health Pty Ltd.
Dr Leila Masson
Board Member
Leila is an integrative paediatrician who combines allopathic medicine with a nutritional and environmental approach to children’s health issues. She ran a busy clinic in Auckland, New Zealand, before moving to Sydney. She received her medical doctorate from the Free University of Berlin and did her paediatric specialist training at the University of California in San Francisco. She received her Master in Public Health from Harvard University and her Diploma in Tropical Medicine from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Leila has worked in the US, Europe, New Zealand, and volunteered for 2 years setting up a rural clinic in Pakistan.
Dr Masson lectures internationally on the subject of children’s nutrition and an integrative medicine approach to paediatric issues, including autism spectrum disorders, ADHD, allergies, recurrent infections, and autoimmune diseases. She speaks English, German, French and Spanish.
She is the author of “Children’s Health A-Z” a parent’s guide to natural therapies for common childhood ailments.
Susan Arentz
Board Member
As Head of Naturopathy at Endeavour College of Natural Health, Susan was responsible for embedding key elements into the degree program to strengthen links between evidence and clinical practice, and for increased self-reflection opportunities enabling graduate outcomes of holistic person-centred care, crucial for benchmarking the equivalence of the degree to international naturopathic qualifications. She has extensive educational expertise and experience as a lecturer and clinical supervisor and knowledge of adult education theory and practice.
Dr Arentz’s PhD and early research focussed on the clinical role of naturopathy in pre-conception healthcare, infertility and polycystic ovary syndrome. More recently she has collaborated with Australian and international experts and helped embed integrative clinical recommendations into clinical practice guidelines. As an editor, she established a mentor framework and facilitated networks of students, researchers, practitioners and educators to help foster the growth of integrative healthcare. As a member of the AIMA board, Dr Arentz will continue to lead and facilitate the development of integrative medicine as being core to the health and wellbeing of individuals and society as a whole.
Tricia Greenway
Tricia Greenway began her career as a teacher of History, the Social Sciences and Media Studies before returning to study Communication and Sociology.
She later worked for the Federal Minister of Aged Family and Health Services, where she gained insights into the mutual benefits of developing consumer input into policy development.
Later as Senior Manager of Planning and Policy and Planning at Arthritis Victoria she heard about the increasing use of O.T.C’S and complementary medicine as part of people’s chosen self-care strategies. This awareness and its implications for health literacy and patient safety became a focus of her efforts and as such she was the invited Consumer spokesperson at the then Minister’s national telecast launch of Comp. Medicines Legislation.
She was also involved in the design and roll out of the national Self-Management Project working closely with the Federal Health Dept.
She has since served as a member of many national committees. These included assessing Sports Medicine and Cosmetic Surgery as a member of the Australian Medical Council’s Recognition of Medical Specialities Advisory Committee, the Complementary Medicines Advisory Committee and the Therapeutic Goods Advertising Code Council.
More recently she worked as the Community Engagement Advisor for the Pharmacy Guild’s “Community Needs Project “as part of the preparation for the 6th Pharmacy Agreement.
On each of these committees Tricia has seen her role as contributing the gathered perspectives of our diverse community .She can also add her own experiences and that of her own family’s pattern of dealing with chronic disease.
Tricia is keen to ensure that people’s decisions to utilise the various proven models of health care are respected in both policy and practice and is delighted to be AIMA’s Consumer Member of the Board.
Linda Funnell-Milner
Linda holds degrees in Law and Education, an Adv. Dip in Nutritional Medicine and certificates in Clinical Hypnotherapy, NLP and Health Coaching. In 2018 Linda became one of the first few Health Coaches in Australia to become a Board Certified Health & Wellness Coach with the NB HWC in the USA.
Linda currently is a consulting Nutritionist, Health Coach and Clinical Hypnotherapist at the Terrey Hills Family Surgery. For 12 years she was the owner and a director of a multimodal Complementary Health Clinic on the Northern Beaches of Sydney.
In conjunction with many of health coaching’s leading thinkers and educators in Australia and New Zealand, Linda founded and is the President of Health Coaches Aus NZ Association (HC ANZA). This group is committed to advocacy and embedding professional standards for Health and Wellness Coaches in Australia and New Zealand as an important part of the Collaborative Care model of whole patient care in clinical and private practices.
Corporate Experience
Prior to working as a health practitioner, Linda had 19 years managerial and Senior Executive experience (nationally and internationally) with 3 of Australia’s top ten corporations as an in-house legal adviser developing strategic policy in the risk management of global issues such as Environmental Impacts, Climate Change, Human Rights. Her work included extensive experience in building stakeholder relations programs with governments, NGO’s and consumers. Linda was a registered political lobbyist with the Federal governments during this time.
During her time in corporate Australia, Linda had international program experience as the Australian business representative on collaborations with United Nations Environment Program for Financial Institutions and the Global Reporting Initiative located in Amsterdam, including six years as the Chair of the GRI Stakeholder Council.
From 2007 – 2013 Linda was a Non-Executive Director and held committee Chair positions on Finance, Audit, Risk and Governance on not-for-profit Boards for Uniting Care NSW & Act and World Wildlife Fund Australia (WWF).
Dr Cristina Beer
Board Member
MBBS (hons), FRACGP, BBioMedSci, ACNEM Member, AIMA member, Cert IV in Fitness (personal trainer)
Dr Cris is an integrative medical doctor, author, corporate speaker, and media doctor. As an expert in integrative medicine Dr. Cris specialises not just in treatment of illnesses, but in the attaining of optimum health. She has particular interests in preventative health, lifestyle medicine, hormone health, weight loss, fatigue and sleep problems, digestive issues, as well as women’s health. She currently practices at The Medical Sanctuary as a registered medical doctor helping real patients with real health issues everyday.
She was also the health consultant for The Biggest Loser retreat. Dr Cris has worked closely alongside Griffith University’s School of Nutrition & Dietetics by being involved in joint research projects focusing on improving nutrition knowledge and delivery of general practitioners for chronic diseases.
Dr Cris’ passion for health and wellness extends beyond the consulting room also. She is an author of the books Healthy Habits, 52 ways to better health, and Healthy Liver; with her third book Healthy Hormones being released in late 2017. She regularly contributes to body+soul as part of their expert team as well as The Daily Telegraph and other print and online publications. She has appeared on Studio 10, The Daily Edition, and SBS Insight.
Dr Kate Armstrong
Board Member
Kate began her medical training at the Auckland Medical School where she won the Douglas Pharmaceutical Prize in Clinical Communication Skills and the Royal NZ College of General Practitioners Prize for General Practice. She then completed her Diploma’s in Paediatrics and Obstetrics and Gynaecology, preparing herself for isolated rural General Practice via locums throughout Northland, Coromandel and Great Barrier Island in search of a model of care that suited her aspirations.
Aotea Health on Great Barrier Island inspired her, and four years later, she began a remote rural General Practice in Colville, Coromandel based on the Great Barrier Island Community Trust model. In November 2003 The Colville Community Health Centre (a remote rural Integrated General Practice) opened at the Northern tip of the Coromandel Peninsula. It provides for 700 permanent patients, many transient visitors and in the summer up to 10,000 holiday makers. The success of this small local service is the provision of Infrastructure via community fund raising by The Colville Community Health Trust. Without community support this service would not exist.
She became a member of Australasian College of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine (ACNEM) in 2006. In 2007 a local St John First Response Unit was started in Colville and Dr Kate became a St John Doctor. She completed her ACNEM fellowship in 2010. The Colville First Response Unit in November 2017 celebrated 10 years of 24/7 emergency service to the Northern Coromandel area. She is also a rural GP representative for the St John Clinical Governance Committee and is actively involved in training Waikato based medical students as an honorary lecturer for the University of Auckland Medical School.
Since then The Colville Project has evolved through collaboration between The Colville Community Health Trust and The Colville Social Service Collective Charitable Trust. They plan to meet the needs of their community into the future by building an Inspirational Wellbeing and Education Village.
Dr Kate has a special interest in motivation and behavioural change, lifestyle medicine and maximizing your genetic potential through food.