Minister orders new strategy, finds Pacific communities’ health on a par with Māori

Pacific health must be resourced well, skilled and Pacific-led, to meet the significant challenge of poor health and persistent inequities, says health minister Andrew Little.

In the Cabinet paper that prefaced the announcement of the Government’s health system reforms, Mr Little said Pacific peoples’ health outcomes are commensurate with those of Māori, and must be addressed if inequities are to be reduced.

He has called on the Ministry of Health to develop a new strategy, which will fall within the “whole system strategy”, and get picked up by new agency Health New Zealand.

Health NZ will be expected to commission a Pacific people’s needs assessment and follow-up plan to address those needs, establish an expert group, develop partnerships with Pacific nations and develop capability to commission services for Pacific people.

Senior Pacific leadership is to provide advice and leadership, and support accountability across the entire health and disability system.

We hold the documents so you don’t have to! Our coverage of the Little reforms references a number of documents which we have gathered together on our website

Pacific healthcare providers have greeted the health reforms with cautious optimism. Most say they have lost count of the number of studies and reports on the alarming health needs within their communities.

Some have suggested that a demon­stration of support for the Māori Health Authority could eventually lead to a similar entity for Pacific peoples. The idea hasn’t gained significant trac­tion, however. There is a long-held un­derstanding that improvements in Māori health will lead to improve­ments in the health of Pacific peoples.

But, beyond the reforms specific to Pacific health, great hope is also being placed in Mr Little’s call for a new, whānau-centred model of care to re­place the competitive funding model that is blind to population risk.

South Seas Healthcare chief execu­tive Silao Vaisola-Sefo has told New Zealand Doctor Rata Aotearoa the tradi­tional business model is damaging, as it inhibits cooperation between thinly spread Pacific health practitioners.

Mr Vaisola-Sefo says major challeng­es, such as the COVID-19 response, have forced cooperation between practices so that resources, work­force and ideas can be shared.

There is also growing cooperation between Pa­cific and Māori practices that see innovation as necessary to meet mas­sive levels of unmet com­munity need, especially in a COVID-19 environ­ment that has worsened economic disparities.

This has led to a Pacif­ic consortium of five south Auckland practices agreeing to work togeth­er on broad community health programmes.

Still, Mr Vaisola-Sefo says workforce issues re­quire urgent action, and he believes the immedi­ate need is for more Pa­cific GPs and nurses.

He says the presence of Pacific medical staff at South Seas’ communi­ty-based assessment centre last year was a sig­nificant reason for its success and community uptake, but practitioners were at risk of burnout from the high workload.

At Hamilton-based K’aute Pasifika Trust, chief executive Leaupepe Rachel Karalus is leading construction of a Pan-Pacific health hub to serve the Waikato’s growing Pacific population and says the reforms should broaden opportunities for providers.

Planned years before the new health reforms, the health hub is being pur­pose built to provide whanau-centred healthcare, with an emphasis on ad­dressing the wider social determinants of health such as housing and employ­ment in the area.

Without a Pacific health authority, Ms Karalus says the reforms must in­clude Pacific representation at all levels of the emerging system, especially at governance levels.

Accountability will be further boost­ed, she says, if Health NZ’s Pacific pro­gramme is directed by the Pacific Aotearoa Lalanga Fou report and is answerable to the Ministry for Pacific Peoples.

Pacific researcher and former GP Debbie Ryan has highlighted the low numbers of Pacific medical specialists and high-level administrators, and says this situation must be turned around if there is to be a broad-based, Pacif­ic-led health response. But Dr Ryan warns it is not enough to have the need for such a response acknowledged at the highest levels; the response must be funded and “operationalised” effectively.