Although the projects to be funded won’t be decided until mid-2021, areas being considered include rheumatic heart disease and cardio-metabolic disease – heart failure combined with hypertension, obesity and diabetes. Julian expects the researchers will work with co-funding charities including the Heart Foundation and Cure Kids to “stretch our dollars”, as well as fundraising. In a nod to the pioneering advances at Green Lane Hospital in the 1960s, by Sir Brian Barratt-Boyes and others, former Green Lane surgeon Dr Alan Kerr, an alumnus and golden graduate, is a consultant to Manaaki Mānawa. Manaaki Mānawa is the only heart research centre in the North Island and many of the people who form its Māori Advisory Group are also on the Māori leadership team for the CoRE. The new centres will enable disparate heart research teams to work cohesively and rapidly together and remove the traditional silos that are a barrier to collaboration. Julian came from the UK’s Bristol University in 2017 after being appointed Professor of Translational Physiology – a role established by the University with the aim of launching Manaaki Mānawa. “We couldn’t apply for the CoRE without first forming our heart research centre at the University.” He believes the launch of Manaaki Mānawa – the name, given by patron Dame Naida Glavish, means preserving the life-force of the heart – was a key reason for the success of the CoRE application. “There are good reasons why they question Pākehā approaches, particularly around research, so first we have to reinstate that trust.”
It’s vital that Māori and Pacific researchers are at front and centre to foster trust in the work, Julian says, because of a fundamental lack of trust by Māori and Pacific Peoples in Western medicines. “The majority of health professionals are logic- and evidence-based and when you talk about connection to wairua, connection to tipuna, or having healing from a spiritual connection to a mountain, if that’s not your belief system, it doesn’t make any sense to you,” says Anna. Despite being disparaged by many Western health professionals, alternative healing is a vital part of treatment for many Indigenous and Pacific Peoples. They emphasise the importance of a holistic approach in which Māori and Pacific cultural beliefs are valued and respected. “It can’t be business as usual,” says Julian. Base government funding is for the national network, but each heart research centre must raise its own additional funding for research.Īnna and Healthy Hearts co-director Professor Julian Paton say Manaaki Mānawa and the new CoRE must effect real change in heart healthcare. HHANZ draws together a national network of researchers at the newly established Manaaki Mānawa Centre for Heart Research, based at the University of Auckland, Heart Otago and the Christchurch Heart Institute. In turn, that will help improve New Zealand’s overall heart healthcare statistics across the whole population. One of its key goals is to address the shameful seven- to eight-year gap in life expectancy between Māori and Pacific Peoples and the rest of the population and help to shape a healthcare system that better meets their needs.
HHANZ will receive $40.5 million in government funding over the next seven and a half years.
Now, as co-director of Healthy Hearts for Aotearoa New Zealand (HHANZ), a new Centre of Research Excellence (CoRE) for heart health equity hosted by the University of Auckland, she and a multidisciplinary team of scientists have the chance to change that. It fixes a small aspect of something that causes an illness.” “We know that putting a stent in your heart doesn’t make people well. I’ve had a stent or bypass surgery and I’m on the right medication, but I’m not well.’ The health system doesn’t do wellness – it only helps you if there is something wrong.”Īccording to that system, says Anna (Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Te Rangi and Ngāti Pūkenga), they’re “fixed” but, in all senses of the words, they’re sick at heart. They say, ‘I’ve got nothing to go to the doctor about. “These people have come to the end of their journey in the health system. Dr Anna Rolleston sees everything that is wrong with Western approaches to heart healthcare in the faces of the clients who walk through her doors every day at the Centre for Health in Tauranga.
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