New Medical Director appointed

The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners has appointed Dr Luke Bradford (pictured above) as its new Medical Director.

Dr Bradford is a Tauranga-based GP working at 5th Avenue Family Practice and became a partner at the practice in 2013.

He trained in Southampton in the UK and moved to New Zealand in 2008. Initially working in emergency medicine, Dr Bradford left the hospital system and travelled via urgent care to Hauora medicine, a Māori philosophy of health, where he worked at Ngati Kahu Hauora in Tauranga and was the GP for Matakana Island.

A desire to help shape service delivery for patients and work with partners to better inform them of the value and excellence of general practice led Dr Bradford into governance roles and representative groups. In 2016, he became Chair of Western Bay of Plenty PHO for five years, and he chaired the Primary Health Alliance.

In 2021 Dr Bradford became one of the Chief Medical Officers at BoP DHB and looked after the surgical services, child, women and family teams and primary care work as well as being clinical lead for COVID-19.

“As the health reforms develop, I have seen first-hand how vital it is that general practice is able to advocate clearly for itself given the vital role we play in people's lives and in the sustainability of the system.

“Work must be done to relieve a lot of the burden our workforce is under whilst striving to ensure first class general practice services are available to all New Zealanders in a timely and affordable manner whilst boosting our workforce numbers and resilience,” says Dr Bradford.

Dr Bradford takes up the Medical Director’s role from Monday 17 April. He is currently on leave and not contactable until this date.

ENDS

Please send any requests for interviews through to Simone White, Senior Communications Advisor, on simone.white@rnzcgp.org.nz or via the media phone 021 027 81909.