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Ngai Tahu's Te Runanga o Otakou hopes a new integrated health and social service centre in south Dunedin will be a step towards tackling the area's high needs.
Chair Donna Matahaere-Atariki says setting up hauora Maori health centres in the late 1990s convinced her of the need for a new model of primary healthcare focusing on particular communities.
She says as well as having a high Maori and Pasifika population, South Dunedin is high on the deprivation scale because of the numbers of elderly people and beneficiaries living there.
That's in a city that is relatively well integrated.
"One of the issues around that is you have an integrated community built on huge inqualities from the past and so the inequalities begin to look natural when they are not natural at all. People assume if you are from a particular end of town that you will be poor, that you will have lesser outcomes than other people. There is very little analysis about why that happens," Ms Matahaere-Atariki says.
The runanga has an option to set up in a former primary school in Cavesham, but it is open to other options and partnerships.
The project has been approved for funding by Te Putahitanga, the South Island Whanau Ora Commissioning Agency
FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH DONNA MATAHAERE ATARIKI CLICK ON THE LINK
https://secure.zeald.com/uma/play_podcast?mv_pc=13362
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