Seuta‘afili Dr Patrick Thomsen, a Samoan academic at the University of Auckland is among researchers to receive funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC).

More than NZ$5.6 million in funding is being given to help support nine up-and-coming Māori and Pacific health researchers to become leaders in their field.

The 2024 Māori and Pacific Health Research Emerging Leader Fellowships are valued at up to $650,000 each and include three recipients from Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland.

The two Pacific recipients are Seuta‘afili Dr Patrick Thomsen (Faculty of Arts) and Dr Sam Manuela (Faculty of Science). Dr Thomsen receives $645,799 over 48 months for his research ‘Manalagi: Addressing discrimination in healthcare for Pacific Rainbow+’.

Dr Manuela receives $551,786 over 48 months for his research into ‘Enhancing Cook Islands mental health practices, knowledge, and research’.

Māori emerging research leader Dr Kimiora Henare (Ngāti Haua, Te Rarawa, Te Aupōuri) receives $649,412 over 48 months. His research is focused on addressing a potential workforce challenge related to the delivery of precision oncology, where doctors and patients choose treatments based on the DNA signature of an individual patient’s tumour.

HRC chief executive, Professor Sunny Collings, says the emerging leader fellowships have enormous potential to advance Māori and Pacific health through innovative and impactful research.

“People-focused funding opportunities help build and shape a highly skilled, diverse, and responsive research workforce,” she says.

Dr Seuta‘afili Patrick Thomsen

Dr Thomsen says his interest in health research is related to his own lived experience as a Samoan kid growing up within a low-income family in South Auckland.

“As a young person … I remember my cohort routinely being the target of many a health intervention. Whether it was numerous immunisation campaigns, sexual health education or the fight against rheumatic fever, for me, there was a sense that I was living in a community that was always in the spotlight.

“This spotlight wasn’t the rockstar type of lighting. It was as if my communities – Pacific, South Auckland, and, as I grew, Rainbow+ – were constantly being problematised in not only the health space, but in many socio-economic areas. We were being treated for brokenness in deficit ways, dominating the way we were seen and ultimately presented and positioned within New Zealand society.”

As he learned about the challenges his communities were encountering with the New Zealand healthcare system, Dr Thomsen says he became convinced of the power of data to shift policy settings. After completing his PhD at the University of Washington in Seattle, he moved into researching Pacific Rainbow+ health and well-being after discovering that there was next to no data in this area.

In 2020, Dr Thomsen received a HRC Pacific Health Emerging Researcher First Grant to carry out the Manalagi Project, which is designed to create a safe cultural research space for Pacific Rainbow+ communities to communicate their unique health and well-being needs.

“We’re determined to move beyond polarising positions. Instead, we will continue the Manalagi ethos, which states that while it is easy for people to focus on how Pacific Rainbow+ individuals ‘stick out’, it’s important to remind everyone of the ways that we fit in – fit into and contribute to our families, workplaces, cultures, churches, schools and societies.

“I’m motivated to have our communities’ experiences be taken seriously within the framework of research, but more than that, validating Pacific ways of generating knowledge as a valuable tool to advance changes in health policy and delivery that can help improve the outcomes for many of us who sit in the margins of society.”