After three years of intensive study, Whakauae scholar Dr Rachel Brown (Te Atiawa, Ngāi Tahu) has been awarded a PhD in Māori health. The degree was conferred at an Auckland University of Technology (AUT) graduation ceremony held on 03 August 2018.
Rachel joined Whakauae in 2015 taking up a scholarship awarded to support her doctoral study. Her doctoral dissertation examined the systemic racism and discrimination experienced by Māori and Pasifika children, and their whānau, in New Zealand's public hospitals. She drew on her own experience, as a mother of a child battling cancer, to investigate how whānau ‘cope' when a child is in hospital with a life-threatening medical condition. That experience had been gruelling for Rachel and her Auckland-based whānau. It led her to wonder how whānau coped when caring for a child transferred to Starship, from outside of Auckland, and away from their support networks. Rachel interviewed 20 whānau and 10 stakeholders using her findings to inform her report, Surviving the System.
Rachel found that, on top of dealing with a child's critical health issues, whānau were constantly faced with coping with hospital system-level barriers and lack of cultural awareness. These avoidable factors created additional stresses at a time when the emotional, social and economic resources of whānau were already being strained to breaking point. The coping focus for whānau thus became more about ‘surviving' the system than about dealing with their child's ill-health. The health care system they experienced was organised to meet the needs of the ‘typical' Pākehā nuclear family rather than to accommodate diverse family forms and ethnic groups.
Rachel's dissertation also explored the role of Ronald McDonald House in caring for whānau away from home. Ronald McDonald House provides accommodation and support for the whānau of children, from outside the main centres, using secondary health care services. The study found that Ronald McDonald House was fulfilling an important role in caring for whānau by being open to the diversity of whānau forms and needs.
Whakauae Research Director, Dr Amohia Boulton jointly supervised Rachel's study with Dr Denise Wilson, Professor of Māori Health at AUT and Dr El-Shadan (Dan) Tautolo, Senior Research Fellow at AUT. Further information about the research is available here.
After three years of intensive study, Whakauae scholar Dr Rachel Brown (Te Atiawa, Ngāi Tahu) has been awarded a PhD in Māori health. The degree was conferred at an Auckland University of Technology (AUT) graduation ceremony held on 03 August 2018.
Rachel joined Whakauae in 2015 taking up a scholarship awarded to support her doctoral study. Her doctoral dissertation examined the systemic racism and discrimination experienced by Māori and Pasifika children, and their whānau, in New Zealand's public hospitals. She drew on her own experience, as a mother of a child battling cancer, to investigate how whānau ‘cope' when a child is in hospital with a life-threatening medical condition. That experience had been gruelling for Rachel and her Auckland-based whānau. It led her to wonder how whānau coped when caring for a child transferred to Starship, from outside of Auckland, and away from their support networks. Rachel interviewed 20 whānau and 10 stakeholders using her findings to inform her report, Surviving the System.
Rachel found that, on top of dealing with a child's critical health issues, whānau were constantly faced with coping with hospital system-level barriers and lack of cultural awareness. These avoidable factors created additional stresses at a time when the emotional, social and economic resources of whānau were already being strained to breaking point. The coping focus for whānau thus became more about ‘surviving' the system than about dealing with their child's ill-health. The health care system they experienced was organised to meet the needs of the ‘typical' Pākehā nuclear family rather than to accommodate diverse family forms and ethnic groups.
Rachel's dissertation also explored the role of Ronald McDonald House in caring for whānau away from home. Ronald McDonald House provides accommodation and support for the whānau of children, from outside the main centres, using secondary health care services. The study found that Ronald McDonald House was fulfilling an important role in caring for whānau by being open to the diversity of whānau forms and needs.
Whakauae Research Director, Dr Amohia Boulton jointly supervised Rachel's study with Dr Denise Wilson, Professor of Māori Health at AUT and Dr El-Shadan (Dan) Tautolo, Senior Research Fellow at AUT. Further information about the research is available here.
