He was the inaugural Professor of Geriatric Medicine in the University of Auckland, and Assistant Dean in the Auckland Faculty of Medicine. He is a past president of the New Zealand Society for Geriatrics and was a member of the Prime Ministerial Taskforce on Positive Ageing. He assisted with writing the constitution for the Research Ethics Committee at Auckland Hospital, and chaired that committee for its first three years. He was a founding member of the Health Research Council's Ethics Committee. He introduced the teaching of clinical ethics to the Auckland School of Medicine, has taught courses in Bioethics and published several papers on aspects of Medical Ethics. He currently chairs the Board of the HOPE Foundation, a charitable trust dedicated to fostering research into ageing and the effects of ageing on society.