Improving health for Maori, Pasifika
The 2019 Ta¯tai Oranga health gathering will be hosted by Ahipara’s Korou Kore Marae on Saturday March, and Te Hiku o Te Ika Marae at Te Hapua on Sunday.
Moko Foundation spokesman Conor O’Sullivan said last year’s inaugural Ta¯tai Oranga, hosted by Nga¯ti Porou Hauora at Te Iritekura Marae at Waipiro Bay, was so successful that it would now be an annual national conference. Moko Foundation is taking a turn to co-ordinate next month’s meeting.
The kaupapa was to bring together scientists, researchers and clinicians from New Zealand and overseas to meet with communities to discuss and develop strategies for how to use cutting-edge medical and genetic research to improve health outcomes for Ma¯ori and Pacific peoples.
The core of Ta¯tai Oranga would involve discussing progress and future directions for a new type of research approach, developing a consortium directly involving Ma¯ori and Pacific communities in that research via partnerships that empowered those communities.
“An important part of such empowerment is to take the research to these communities, and not just do the research in the ivory towers of the universities,” Mr O’Sullivan said.
The consortium currently included the Maurice Wilkins Centre (MWC), Moko Foundation and Nga¯ti Porou Hauora. The MWC was a national centre of research excellence, bringing together close to 500 of New Zealand’s top scientists and clinicians from universities across the country together. It also worked in partnership with the Moko Foundation-led Waharoa Ki Te Toi research centre based at Kaitaia Hospital, and the Nga¯ti Porou Hauora-led Te Rangawairua o¯ Paratene Nga¯ta research centre based at Te Puia Springs Hospital.
Both centres were established last year, and with MWC support aimed to develop their capacity and become sustainable, independent health research centres.
“Metabolic diseases are a major cause of health inequities and inequalities for Ma¯ori and Pacific peoples, particularly so in regional areas such as Muriwhenua and Taira¯whiti, where economic and geographical issues compound the problems,” Mr O’Sullivan said.
“Therefore the first focus of the consortium has been to understand how genetic factors might contribute to these high rates of metabolic diseases, and how this information can be used to improve health outcomes.
“The consortium has attracted important outside support from the Northland DHB, and more than $6.5 million in research funding to date from the Health Research Council and the Maurice Wilkins Centre for three main research projects — to identify how genetic factors in Ma¯ori and Pacific peoples contribute to the high rates of metabolic diseases such as Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and gout; to develop strategies to use this information to improve health outcomes for these people and for research studies in schools to understand the true impact of sugar on children, and to link this to better education about metabolic health.”
The Ta¯tai Oranga meeting would provide updates on the consortium’s research, including new discoveries of gene variants that seemed to be specifically important for influencing the risk of metabolic disease in Ma¯ori and Pacific peoples.
It would also provide the latest information on treating Type 2 diabetes, while international participants such as University of Cambridge scientist and BBC TV presenter Dr Giles Yeo would discuss how genes affect the development of obesity.
Professor Lisa Matisoo-Smith from Otago would describe the latest research into how migrations across the Pacific had come to influence the genetics of peoples across Polynesia.
The programme would also feature presentations from Ma¯ori and Pacific researchers, and key community figures, and would address important issues such as who owned genetic information, how it could be protected, and who would serve as kaitiaki [guardian] for that information.
“More details on the programme will be available shortly,” Mr O’Sullivan said.
“It will be free to attend, and we encourage anyone with an interest in this kaupapa to do so.”
■ For more information, or to register interest in attending, contact Joel Pirini (joelp@imoko.com), Conor O’Sullivan, cosullivan@themokofoundation.com or Peter Shepherd peter.shepherd@auckland.ac.nz