Hāpai Te Hauora welcomes indigenous health professionals

PRESS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Hāpai Te Hauora welcomes indigenous health professionals to Auckland for the PRIDoC conference.

This week in Auckland Te Ohu Rata o Aotearoa (Te ORA), the Māori Medical Practitioners Association, is the host for the Pacific Region Indigenous Doctor’s Congress PRIDoC. PRIDoC was first held 15 years ago and has formal membership from the Australian Indigenous Doctors Association, Association of American Indian Physicians, Association of Native Hawaiian Physicians, Indigenous Physicians of Canada and the Medical Association for Indigenous Peoples of Taiwan.

In her opening address to the congress today Dame Tariana Turia challenged the indigenous health practitioners and students present to come up with their own tools to change outcomes for their families and communities. Speaking about her time in Parliament and the introduction of Whānau Ora she said “they genuinely thought they could ‘fix us up’. They thought they had the tools but only we can fix ourselves. Nobody else fixes you up”.

Hāpai Te Hauora CEO Lance Norman endorses this sentiment “At Hāpai we have long recognised that the most effective interventions for our whanau, hapū and iwi are those in which Māori are involved right from the beginning. By Māori, for Māori makes logical sense and we have the evidence base from our communities which backs this up”.

PRIDoC will run until Thursday 1st of December at the University of Auckland. Key note speakers include Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Pro Vice-Chancellor Māori at the University of Waikato, Moana Jackson, Lawyer and Māori rights activist, and Dr Camara Jones, President of the American Public Health Association.

See here for more information about PRIDoC 2016 http://pridoc2016.org

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