NICK JONES
Man of medicine and music
It’s hard to reconcile the dancing keyboardist in the gold cape and silly hat with the unassuming and measured health official responsible for the wellbeing of some 160,000 people.
Like many a bureaucrat or civil servant, Nick Jones is far more interesting than some – usually their critics – would assume.
For the past 11 years he’s been a medical officer of health in Hawke’s Bay. And what a tenure it’s been. Along with stark health inequity across the region, he’s had to deal with the world’s largest outbreak of waterborne campylobacter, a paratyphoid outbreak, and he had to tell the captain of one of the world’s largest cruise ship companies that his 2600 passengers weren’t coming to Napier until Jones was satisfied that Covid-9 tests had been carried out.
As a dancing keyboardist, Jones is best observed in the clip of his ‘‘funk metal’’ band Emulsifier performing their closest thing to a hit, Get On Up, in 1994. Jones, known then as ‘‘Dr Africa’’ due to his penchant for African music, can be seen thrashing his keyboard in a sleeveless gold cape.
He turns 60 in May. He was raised in Glen Innes, Auckland, the second eldest of five kids. Dad Frank was an architect who designed many churches around Auckland. Mum Pat was a very busy parent.
It was a musical household, probably influenced by Jones’ grandfather Llewelyn Jones, a composer best known for writing
Ma¯ ori Rhapsody in the 1930s. Young Nicholas very nearly followed his father into architecture, and was in two minds when he went to Otago University in 1979.
‘‘I’m not sure what it was about medicine. I was very interested in biology at high school, but probably most importantly I was drawn to an occupation in which I could help people.’’
He completed a degree in psychology and physiology before being accepted into medical school. His eight years of study were broken by a year-long interlude that saw him travelling around Europe and doing stints as a travelling jewellery rep and as a waiter at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club in central London.
The last few years of his study included a trip to Nakhodka in Russia’s far east. He was nominated as New Zealand’s representative of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War group.
‘‘We had to give a speech. I became quite annoyed by the conference because it was clearly a total propaganda set-up by the communist youth, so I completely changed my speech. I gave one that was all about the need for more collaboration and was quite critical of the Soviets. That was quite funny,’’ says Jones in the typically laconic manner that suggests it probably wasn’t.
Not too long after that trip he went to Ghana as part of the elective component of his studies. ‘‘I decided I wanted to do community medicine. I chose Ghana. Don’t ask me why.’’
It was Ghana that clinched his chosen path of public health. He finished his studies, worked as a locum in the UK for a while, then began training in public health.
‘‘I think public health suited my mix of skills and interests. I was always interested in the big picture . . . I think in a lot of clinical medicine you’re on the receiving end, especially working in hospitals. Some people just keep coming back as if in a revolving door. They come in, you get them fixed up a bit, then they’re back three months later. That can be really hard.
‘‘In public health, your patient is the population. If you apply that analogy, you use health statistics to diagnose the ailments of the population and you use policies and promotional methods to try to cure the population. It’s working at a much more macro scale in terms of people’s health.’’
When Jones appears in the media, it’s usually because he and his team are reacting to a crisis. But mostly the job is proactive.
He sees his role as presenting evidence and perspectives in a way that shapes discussion and tackles problems. It’s also about ensuring population health has a voice where many, possibly competing, interests are at play.
He spent 10 years as a medical officer of health in Auckland, then successfully applied for a fellowship at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia. That involved setting up a national environmental health tracking system, and a short stint in Guyana to help with improving systems tracking the conditions of people infected with HIV.
It was in Atlanta that he and wife Bernie had the first of their two children, Jeremy, now 13. Hugo, 9, arrived after they had returned to New Zealand. ‘‘One of the things I really missed in America was the connection to Ma¯ ori culture. It had been something I developed when in Auckland and I felt a place like Hawke’s Bay would give me that. And it has.’’
The Havelock North campylobacter outbreak of 2016 that affected more than 7000 people was without question one of the more stressful events of his tenure. It wasn’t helped that he and Jeremy were among those bedridden by the bug. ‘‘One of the things that can be said of the response work we do is that it often presents an opportunity . . . You should never waste a good disaster.’’
The campylobacter experience was dwarfed just four years later with the arrival of Covid19. It was March 15. The Ruby Princess cruise ship carrying 2647 passengers and 1148 crew was docked in Wellington when the ship sent forward notice to Jones and his team detailing the numbers and types of illness on board.
On seeing there were two people with an undiagnosed ‘‘influenza-like illness’’, it was Jones who had to inform the captain that, unless they were shown to be clear of Covid-19, the passengers would not be allowed to disembark in Napier.
Emails released to Stuff revealed Jones’ forthright missives and the captain’s neardisbelief that he would deign to keep them from docking. He arranged for urgent testing of the sick passengers in Wellington. The tests came back clear and the passengers were allowed to disembark. We know now that other people on board were infected too, and passed the infection on to several people in Napier.
Making the call to potentially disrupt the voyage of thousands of cruise passengers was not something Jones did lightly.‘‘That was probably one of the hardest days of my life. I spent a lot of time on the phone, a lot of time trying to organise things in Wellington, trying to talk through issues with colleagues at the Ministry of Health and ultimately I had to just make that call. I just knew it was the right thing to do.’’
His decades of work in public health saw him awarded a Public Service Medal in November.
When he’s not preventing illness or dealing with crises, Jones turns to music. He’s played the keyboard since the age of 13. For a while, when a student, he hosted African music shows on bFM and RadioActive.
His mid-90s band Emulsifier released one album, Cerebral Implosion, and got a fair bit of air time on student radio.
He’s amassed a huge collection of LPs during his travels, and in recent years has taken to dabbling as a DJ.
‘‘I do like to, every once in a while, play music at a party. I’m not very good at it. I’m pretty rubbish, actually. But I’ve got the records.’’
‘‘I do like to ... play music at a party. I’m not very good at it. But I’ve got the records.’’