BIMA Board

Dr Penny Caldicott – Chair

Bmed FRACGP

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

MB ChB, MMedSc, MRCP, FRACP, FRNZCGP, FACNEM, DCH, DRCOG, Dip Occ Med

Tim has been working in integrative medicine for the last 30 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.

 

 

Emeritus Professor Stephen P Myers

Stephen is in the Faculty of Health at Southern Cross University. He is one of Australia’s leading academics in natural, complementary and integrative medicine. He has qualifications in naturopathy (ND), western medicine (BMed) and pharmacology (PhD). Stephen commenced lecturing in the private colleges in 1984 and became Dean of Naturopathy at the NSW College of Natural Therapies in 1986. Stephen was the Head of the School of Natural and Complementary Medicine at Southern Cross University between 1995-2001; and he led the development and implementation of the Batchelor of Naturopathy program that graduated 500 Baccalaureates.

He has raised over $8 million in research funding; supervised 18 higher degree research students to completion; authored 3 books, 13 book chapters, 145 peer-reviewed research papers; and acted as a consultant to industry, government and academia across a broad range of issues. Despite all of this, he has a delightful sense of humour, is very down to earth and is a fundamentally good man.