Listen Now: 
A University of Canterbury health sciences lecturer says looking at the long term effects of the Christchurch earthquakes may help students understand the links between colonisation and poor Maori health.
Annabel Ahuriri-Driscoll has been looking at ways to improve the health of the Maori population, includign assessing the effectiveness of rongoa or traditional healing.
She says debates about health status often focus on individual circumstances rather than looking at the big picture.
She says it can be hard to get students to understand how history and long term socio-cultural and economic factors can affect health status, but there is now an analogy close to home with the post-quake environment.
"What happens when some of those fundamental economic determinants, destruction of land, homes, housing, people's finances, on a large scale, what does that do to us as a community? So that may be a way of showing students that when there are very broad factors in play, you've got to take the big context into account," she says.
Annabel Ahuriri-Driscoll says improving Maori health status needs to be made a health priority nationally.
FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH ANNABEL AHURIRI DRISCOLL CLICK ON THE LINK
https://secure.zeald.com/uma/play_podcast?podlink=MjcwOTc=
Copyright © 2015, UMA Broadcasting Ltd: www.waateanews.com
RELATED NEWS
