Healthy Families Rotorua is exploring and demonstrating how Mātauranga Māori systems and traditions influence practice that encourages communities to consider their health and wellbeing.
Te Patu o Te Rangi is a framework with the aim to guide Healthy Families Rotorua and Te Kāhui Māori with the intent to increase access to and quality engagement with those communities most at risk of preventable chronic illness and disease.
The design was led by Tohunga Rereata Makiha, who brings the traditional incantation to help describe a Māori perspective of the world; by grouping cultural settings like Wai – Water, Kai – Food, Whenua – Land and Whare – Shelter.
Our newest recruit Suaree Borell is responsible for making sense of the work in her role as data insights and evaluator for Healthy Families Rotorua.
She says, “It is an essential pivoting point that focuses on building change within our own set of practices over and around the change we seek in communities, policy settings etc.”
Healthy Families Rotorua takes a systems approach to reducing risk factors of preventable chronic disease, which aims to improve health outcomes and increase health equity through key focus areas; improved nutrition, physical activity and mental health, smoke-free and reduced alcohol-related harm.
Positive change for Te Arawa and Rotorua communities is about being grounded in principles, processes and practices. These systems allow for communities to share experiences of positive change in ways that are relevant and meaningful to them.
A collective with an explicit focus on improving equity and health outcomes for Māori, using frameworks that sit within a Māori world view, te ao Māori
“Positive change as a movement that brings people together, grounds and confirms their intentions to work for a common good, and a collective flourishing of our communities and the whānau within them.”
Te Patu o te Rangi – A Māori system endorsed and supported by Healthy Families NZ Te Kāhui Māori October 2020
