New Board member for the IHA

The IHA is delighted to welcome nurse counsellor Catherine Cook to the Board. Catherine has been running the confidential 'Ask the Nurse' website on the IHA since June 2003 and was officially voted onto the Board at the annual Board Meeting in April 2005.

Catherine lives in Auckland, New Zealand, with her husband and two children. In addition to her role with the IHA, Catherine works part time at the University of Auckland as a counsellor at the Student Health Service, where she primarily sees clients who are addressing health and/or sexuality-related issues. She also works as a counsellor for the New Zealand Herpes Foundation.

Catherine can draw on a wealth of experience in nursing, midwifery and counselling. During her early nursing career, Catherine developed a particular interest in public health and women's health and went on to qualify and practise as a midwife. As her career progressed, she shifted her attention to sexual health and began working as a health adviser at a free sexual health clinic, providing education and brief intervention counselling for those attending the clinic. Catherine rapidly became aware that feelings of shame, remorse, secrecy and isolation were common among those seeking help and that staff sometimes struggled to provide appropriate support. For the past eight years, she has explored ways of helping people affected by herpes to deal with the complexities associated with living with a sexually transmitted infection. In 2006, she will begin a PhD exploring issues related to stigma and genital herpes.

Catherine comments: "I find my role as nurse counsellor to the IHA most rewarding. I feel privileged to be able to accompany people as they try to make sense of living with genital herpes. Often, e-mailing me is the first port of call, where people take the first steps to break out of the cycle of isolation and misinformation and then begin to realise that dreams of intimacy and children are not out of reach. Many people grapple with the considerable amount of conflicting information that is available on websites relating to genital herpes. They are relieved to find a website and counselling advice that reflects up-to-date medical research and offers practical steps on how to incorporate this information into an intimate relationship."