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Report Summary
The aim of the paper was to investigate and bring together issues and discussion involved in an emerging Maori Health Protection workforce and associated training and recruitment needs. It includes a summary of recent work carried out in this area both at a national level and in some instances at a regional level in order to illustrate the scope of issues for further development. It is hoped this report may be a useful resource for others committed to Maori health protection and best practice for Aotearoa New Zealand.
Since Maori health protection is still embryonic and directions are still being trialled, this report should be considered as a useful starting point and clearing house for information rather than an attempt to make premature conclusions where there has not been widespread discussion. This work is still in progress and it is hoped that once more stakeholders are fully involved in the conversation agreements can be made to work together and find the best ways to move forward. Whilst national support and consistency is important, regions are varied enough to require room to move in evolving what works in their area with their services.
As the Ministry of Health, Massey University and Bay of Plenty District Health Board (my employer) are key stakeholders in the issue, work on this topic was carried out in conjunction and with support from these organisations – acknowledgement is therefore given for this – kia ora.
Scope of Project
In order to approach the issues, the scope of the project needed to be inclusive of the needs of Maori and other stakeholders. A danger was recognised in focussing purely on the question ‘how to get more Maori HPOs’ which uses a non-Maori logic model and framework, despite being related to Treaty principles (equality, participation). A different question may be asked by an active Treaty partnership - for example ‘where are efforts best spent to equitably protect the health of all New Zealanders (including Maori)’ – the direction may include options other than placing scarce Maori resource into ‘Tauiwi’ roles like HPOs. This has been kept in mind throughout the process to encourage participation and relevance for Maori.
Process
The conceptual framework in Chapter 1 was generated to set an appropriate context and starting point for discussion with stakeholders. It goes hand in hand with several other pieces of work as well as helping to set the groundwork for the next stage of a development programme and possibly thesis work. A literature review (Chapter 1) was also produced, along with discussion about research methodologies and potential thesis proposal for a Masters degree study.
Stakeholders were identified as reflected in Appendix 2, and various discussions were carried out with some of them as recorded in the table provided. A range of discussion documents were provided as backgrounders, some of which are incorporated into this report. Some of these documents are new work with this process used as a way to ‘try them out’.
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