Transcript
According to the Pasifika Medical Association, when it first started out in the mid-1980s there wasn't a single Pacific primary health care provider in South Auckland.
Now there are Pacific health services all over the country.
Monique Faleafa is the CEO of Le Va, a national organisation focusing on Pacific peoples' health and wellbeing.
When she first started out in her career, she was one of very few Pacific clinicians.
"We have seen a fantastic growth. There's a long way to go. But when I first started out, you know, we could count the Pacific clinicians on one hand and now we've got so many coming through. Not just clinical psychologists but psychiatrists and doctors as well."
Dr Siale 'Alo Foliaki has been at the frontline of mental health services in South Auckland for more than 20 years and he agrees.
"As a percentage of our overall health workforce - doctors, nurses, social workers, occupational therapists - we are starting to move towards our actual representation in the community. But we're still really well short."
Ms Faleafa says Pacific workers now make up about 5% of the mental health and addictions workforce.
"So we're mostly we're not in clinical positions, we're mostly in community support positions. A friend of mine calls us the factory workers of the health workforce. But we are growing clinicians better now. In general we still need more working in child adolescent mental health because that's where over half of our population are."
Both Ms Faleafa and Mr Foliaki agree that better representation of Pacific people in the health sector will improve cultural competency.
But with government figures showing that 62 percent of Pacific Islanders are now born in New Zealand Mr Foliaki says the demographic of Pacific people has changed and it's not enough just to be a Pacific healthworker.
"The critical factor is two thirds of all of those children are of mixed marriages, mixed heritage. So they're Maori, Samoan, they're Tongan, Niuean. And so we have to think about, the term now is not about cultural-competency, it's poly-cultural competency. We have to be competent across multiple cultures and intergenerational differences between what it means with the value system of our island born more elderly community and the New Zealand born value system which is significantly different."
The most recent Pacific Health workforce government report in 2014 recommended ways to increase the number of Pacific peoples in the health sector and improve outcomes for Pacific patients.
The recommendations included implementing an improved model of care, addressing issues around the training and development of Pacific health workers and focusing on the Auckland region which is home to two thirds of New Zealand's Pacific population.
