Professor Helen Danesh-Meyer is made a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to ophthalmology in the 2025 New Year Honours. Photo: Supplied
Dame Helen Danesh-Meyer works "at the intersection of where the eye meets the brain".
As New Zealand's pre-eminent authority, and an internationally recognised leader in this area of clinical science, she has been made a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to ophthalmology.
Dame Helen is one of seven new knights and dames appointed nationwide this New Year.
As a clinician scientist, she told RNZ she spent half her week with patients or in the operating theatre, and the other half on research, supporting students and working with a number of charities.
"When you see your patients, you understand the questions that need to be answered to improve their outcomes."
Since her first honour, when she was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2023, Dame Helen had made further contributions on the international stage as president of the Neuro-ophthalmology Society of Australia - the first New Zealander to hold this post.
This year, she was ranked among the top 10 glaucoma leaders globally.
Her desire to help people began at university, when she was studying in Otago. "What struck me was how precious vision was," she said. "Patients would mention all the time how precious their sight was."
Now, her work involved using the eye as a biomarker for brain health.
In 2024, she was elected as a member of Academia Ophthalmologica Internationalis - a group limited to 100 scientists from around the world.
"New Zealand, in many areas, is at the forefront of research," she said. "We have a strong group of researchers who manage to do extraordinary research that hits the international stage, and I'm fortunate to be part of that team."
Professor and surgeon Helen Danesh-Meyer examining a patient's eye. Photo: Supplied
She also sought ways to improve quality-of-life for patients through her charity work.
"A diagnosis is just a diagnosis," she said - patient education and advocacy could go a long way to improving life for people with chronic disease, such as glaucoma.
She led Women in Vision, a national forum empowering female ophthalmologists, optometrists and students, and through Glaucoma New Zealand, which she had founded and now had 15,000 members, she sought to provide patients with meaningful, ongoing support.
The Vision Research Foundation, another organisation she founded and now led, "is a charity to give bright young researches the freedom to follow their curiosity, and to pursue bold, transformative research work in vision science".
"So it means creating teams where people are trusted with challenges early in their career, and supporting them to move forward."
Being made a dame was "a tremendous honour," she said, "But it reflects the team work of many exceptional people."
"The better work is still yet to come - it's a platform to move forward."
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