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A Maori health and physical activity expert is winning international attention for his efforts to develop a Maori framework for healthy exercise.
Dr Ihirangi Heke from Waikato/Tainui has worked with elite athletes as well as lectured on physical education.
He’s developed a new Maori health framework Atua Matua which looks back at history to find an authentic approach.
"Tauiwi approaches to health individualise it. Authentic processes for Maori never have. In fact there is very little comment around health specifically other than in the last 40 to 50 years but prior to that it was more about how we were going to perpetuate genetic material," Dr Heke says.
His ideas have come to the attention of researchers at John Hopkings University in Baltimore in the United States, and it is funding a study to test how they can contribute to treatment of health and obesity among indigenous groups.
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