Starting simple

The focus of this blog is haurora, health, in a bicultural context.

The simplest place to start is a quick look at the differences between the health of Māori and non-Māori.

You could say it's common knowledge that Māori are disadvantaged when it comes to health in general.

It feels rather bleak to start off this way.

It's important to be real about the challenges facing Māori.

I think it's also important to break this down to specifics.
The publication I've look at is the Māori Health Chart Book 2015 published by the Ministry of Health. It's available as a PDF here.

The findings of this publication are summed up as follows:
"The chart book shows that Māori have higher rates than non-Māori for many health conditions and chronic diseases, including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and asthma. Māori also experience higher disability rates."

So that's a very simple and quite worrying starting point.

In the next post I'll look at mental health specifically.