HRC grants awarded for Māori health projects

HRC grants awarded for Māori health projects

This week the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) announced funding for its 2016 research project grants. The funding included two projects based at the University of Waikato.

The university’s Te Kotahi Research Institute (TKRI) Director Dr Leonie Pihama is the principal investigator in both projects: He Oranga Ngākau: Māori and Trauma Informed Care, which has received $1,190,130, and Honour Project Aotearoa, which has received $1,186,804.

“We are excited and honoured to be able to move forward with these projects through support from the HRC. Both project concepts have been driven by Māori communities because of needs identified by them,” says Dr Pihama. “In the mental health sector in Aotearoa, there is an increased emphasis on Trauma Informed Care approaches, which is imported mainly from overseas. Māori Providers have argued for some time that we need knowledge and solutions based on research carried out in this country, that is grounded in Kaupapa Māori approaches that we know work for our people.”

He Oranga Ngākau: Māori and Trauma Informed Care project aims to provide research-based information for the development of a Kaupapa Māori framework that supports both Māori and non-Māori practitioners working with whānau experiencing trauma.

“Māori providers working alongside whānau have for some time stated their concern at the privileging of western clinical approaches,” says Dr Pihama. “This project explores Māori counsellors’, clinicians’ and healers’ views of Trauma Informed Care in order to identify key principles and practices that will provide a Kaupapa Māori model for care when working with whānau.”

Research objectives include engaging in analysis of relevant literature, including policies around Māori models of health and wellbeing, and mental health and addiction service systems of care, and conducting interviews with Māori providers and Indigenous peoples who have expertise in working alongside whānau, hapū, iwi and Indigenous peoples.

Honour Project Aotearoa will investigate understandings of wellbeing and access to health services for the Māori Takatāpui (LGBTQI) community. The project will build on the Honor Project undertaken by the Indigenous Wellness Research Institute at the University of Washington, which explored wellbeing within the Native American Two Spirit community.

The research will gather information and data that will form a basis for understanding the complexities of being a minority group within an Indigenous population. This is the first project to explore health needs of Takatāpui Māori as a community and provide insights into processes by which health service delivery can serve their needs.

The project will investigate understandings of health and wellbeing in relation to the Takatāpui community. Positive gender identity, sexual identity and sexuality are fundamental to sense of self, self-esteem and ability to lead a fulfilling life. Wellbeing is increasingly understood as being culturally and environmentally specific. However, health and wellbeing issues in Aotearoa New Zealand are predominantly discussed within a Western heterosexual frame of reference. Health and wellbeing outcomes vary widely across different population groups, including Māori, Pacific peoples, refugees, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people.

The overall aim of Honour Project Aotearoa is to investigate and identify life experiences of Takatāpui and gains insights into the ways in which those experiences impact on achieving health and wellbeing, including access to, and provision of, health care for this specific Māori community.

Partnering with the university is Māori sexual and reproductive health promotion service Te Whāriki Takapou. Its Chief Executive Alison Green says we live in a country that, generally speaking, represents Māori in deficit ways. “With regard to takatāpui Māori, and sexual and gender identity, we are overwhelmingly represented as ‘risk’, particularly young Māori – risk to others, risk to society,” says Ms Green.

“Instead of the usual deficit approach to research done by people who are outsiders in relation to takatāpui communities, this project is undertaken by insiders, and that makes a difference to the quality and accuracy of the work we’ll be doing.”

“Much of the need in the Takatāpui Māori community is around racism and homophobia, which is very timely in terms of the recent Orlando attack,” says Dr Pihama. “There is anecdotal evidence of homophobia in this country, and this combines with issues of systemic racism in terms of health disparity. This project will look at these issues in some depth and will build on international indigenous work already done in this area. Both researchers highlight that having a strong collaboration across the two organisations is important to the success of the project.

Both projects commence on July 1, 2016 and will be undertaken over a three year period.

ENDS

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