Emeritus Professor Dame Peggy Koopman-Boyden, DNZM, of Hamilton, for services to seniors
Emeritus Professor Dame Peggy Koopman-Boyden has given more than 45 years of service to research and policy advice relating to New Zealand’s older population and was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to the elderly in 1997.
Dame Peggy led major research projects for the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology during the 1990s and 2000s and recently completed a multi-year programme of research on active ageing funded by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. In 2005, she became the founding President of the Waikato Branch of the New Zealand Association of Gerontology, a position she held until 2012. She has been a member of the Age Concern Advisory Research Committee since 2010. Since 2008 she has been Chair of AgeWISE, a strategic advisory group to the Waikato District Health Board. She has been Chair of Hamilton City Council’s Older Persons Advisory Panel from 2013 to 2016, and now chairs the Steering Group of Hamilton’s Age Friendly accreditation project for the World Health Organisation. In 2013, she was appointed as a Foundation Board Member of the Institute of Healthy Ageing. From 2001 to 2003, Dame Peggy was Chair of the Ministerial Advisory Committee on Complementary and Alternative Health, and in 2007, she chaired the Australian Complementary and Alternative Grant Review Panel for their National Health and Medical Research Council.