Dr Diana Sarfati was appointed to the role of Director-General of Health and Chief Executive of the Ministry of Health in November 2022 having acted in the role since July 2022. Diana is a public health physician, cancer epidemiologist and health services researcher, and she has a PhD from the University of Otago. Diana was previously Tumuaki, Chief Executive and National Director of Te Aho o Te Kahu – Cancer Control Agency and prior to that she was National Director of Cancer Control at the Ministry of Health where she oversaw the implementation of the agency. From 2015 to 2019, Diana was the co-head and then head of the Department of Public Health and the Director of the Cancer and Chronic Conditions (C3) research group at University of Otago, Wellington. Diana is a former member of the National Cancer Programme Leadership Board, the National Screening Advisory Group, the National Ethics Advisory Committee, the Bowel Cancer Taskforce and the National Bowel Cancer Screening Advisory Committee. She is currently a Lancet Commissioner for the Health Systems and Cancer Lancet Commission, and a member of the International Advisory Committee to Lancet Oncology, the Advisory Committee to International Agency for Research on Cancer’s (IARC) Pacific cancer hub, IARC’s international expert group on social inequalities in cancer, and the Board of the International Cancer Benchmarking Partnership. She also led a Lancet Oncology series on cancer in small island developing states.