The recipient of the 2022 National Leadership Award for Aotearoa New Zealand is Anna Elders, Clinical Lead at Just a Thought.

Anna is a fierce and effective advocate for reducing suffering and improving mental health in communities.  With eMental Health, it has become possible to reach people who may not have otherwise found the help they need.  Knowing that, Anna is passionate and powerful in her work to increase access to quality digital therapies. She sees the big picture – national and international level opportunities as well as the real-world experiences of families and individuals.

A true champion of digital mental health in this country, Anna believes that it should be available to everyone, but also that it needs to become more widely utilised within the sector. She is a fierce advocate for equity, believes that everyone in New Zealand should have access to mental health services and is committed to quality digital mental health options helping close the equity gap.

Not only that, she is a natural collaborator as evidenced by instigating over 40 agencies coming together in 2022 to share, and even more importantly agree, on key actions for ‘optimising our digital mental health, addiction and wellbeing ecosystem in New Zealand’.

She is a strong believer in workforce development and policy change and spends a lot of her time delivering grassroots training or meeting with secondary and primary care to enable change.

It is clear that this worthy recipient leads expansively and intensely – she chairs the Digital Health Association’s Wellbeing industry group, she is an experienced clinician and is the clinical lead at Just a Thought, a highly-regarded digital mental health provider.

Congratulations Anna and the team at Just a Thought!