While clearing out his drawers, Peter Crampton stumbled across an old hand-written diary.
Started the week he began as University of Otago pro-vice-chancellor of health sciences and dean of the Otago Medical School, it begins with a list of priorities and areas Prof Crampton wanted to take on — strategic planning exercises, a review of post-graduate programmes, a revision of management protocols, getting approval for new dentistry and pharmacy buildings, managing work flows, reviewing admissions policy, and improving Maori and Pacific enrolments.
Almost eight years later, evidence of what was done about that list can be seen close at hand.
Out his office window the new dentistry facilities are taking shape, and the latest NZ Medical Journal contains an article, co-authored by Prof Crampton, charting the steep rise in Maori and Pacific student numbers at Otago.
"It’s been very amusing to find that list," he said.
"There’s been a huge amount since over and above that, but that was only on day two or three, and I did actually nail some of those important priorities for me."
He also learned a lesson about not planning too rigidly — the second Canterbury earthquake occurred three weeks after he started and was a reminder how quickly priorities could change.
While Prof Crampton likes lists and plans, he describes his ascent to Otago’s top health job as accidental.
"My whole career has been unimagined, at least in advance.
"My career planning, to the extent there has been any, has been following interests and passions ... I can see a natural progression, but it’s not one I would have anticipated in the slightest."
There is a stark contrast between the state house-lined streets of the Wellington suburb of Cannons Creek and the ivory towers of academia, but without the experience of the former, Prof Crampton would not have found his way to the latter.
Cannons Creek, in Porirua, is one of the most deprived places in that city, and as a young GP there Dr Crampton saw some distressing things.
He misses treating those patients and sometimes wishes he was back in general practice.
However, seeing deprivation in a first world country stirred something within him.
"I had a mounting sense of frustration and very strong disquiet that the world was not as it should be," Prof Crampton said.
"So many of the problems I was confronting on literally an hour-by-hour basis were products of forces beyond the control of the healthcare system, the nurse, the GP, whoever.
"I had a very strong intuitive sense of that, but I didn’t have the formal learning or disciplinary knowledge to really understand the structural factors behind what was going on."
The opening of the Te Kaika, the Ngai Tahu health hub in Caversham — in which the university is a partner — and a dental school in Counties Manukau, reflects Prof Crampton’s continuing devotion to making a difference.
Questioning that which results in some people missing out led Prof Crampton to public health, the discipline which has dominated his professional life.He became involved in the New Zealand Deprivation Project — an ongoing research study of census data to which Prof Crampton still contributes — and joined Victoria University’s Health Services Research Centre before taking on a teaching role at Otago’s Wellington campus.
Eventually Prof Crampton became dean of the Wellington campus before moving to his current roles at Otago.
"I have learned a lot about dentistry in the last 7 years," he said, laughing.
"I can say the same about every single area of the domain of the health sciences division ... if the pro-vice-chancellor isn’t interested in complexity and diversity, both in terms of professional groups, geography, health politics, educational politics, then they shouldn’t be in that job because it is full of all of that.
"It has been an immense pleasure to engage with a diverse range of colleagues from different disciplines, be educated by them, and hear their views about what is important, how they can make a difference, and how we can collectively contribute and how I can support them."
Prof Crampton’s reach is a long one: the northernmost staff member is in Samoa, the southernmost in Invercargill.
Unsurprisingly, he has a list of his trips to the airport — all 203 of them — on the way to see colleagues, or to liaise with Australian medical schools.
"I’ve always felt one of the problems with the role is not being visible enough, because it’s very hard to be just by virtue of the size of the domain — but that’s also the pleasure and the challenge of it," he says.
Other academics are just part of it though: he also has to deal with multiple DHBs, primary healthcare providers, GPs, dental clinics, pharmacies and physio clinics.
"Training health professionals requires complete co-operation and synergy between the health system and all its parts and the education system," Prof Crampton said.
"One without the other, there just is no health workforce."
Prof Crampton will not be lost to Otago. While he is stepping down from a leadership role, he will continue to teach and has chosen to work at Kohatu, the medical school’s centre for Maori health.
He said his time as pro-vice-chancellor had been "massively rewarding".
"It’s been a time of incredible opportunities and excitement, to create and develop things, and hopefully the world is in a slightly better place."