Māori adults who experience chronic pain are being prescribed painkillers at the expense of best practice treatments and are not being offered referrals to specialists, research from the Māori community health provider, Tu Kotahi Māori Asthma and Research Trust and the University of Otago, Wellington has found
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Media release from the University of Otago, Wellington
Wednesday 12 May 2021, 11:16 AM
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A new University of Otago, Wellington article has shone a light on the risks and difficulties faced by tāngata whaikaha, the disabled Māori community, during COVID-19.
The commentary, published in the American Indian Culture and Research Journal, discusses the inequities faced by tāngata whaikaha after Aotearoa went into lockdown last year.
The paper highlights specific mechanisms that have been developed that the authors say have the potential to exacerbate inequities, such as data-centred algorithms and inequitable resource distribution frameworks.
“This pandemic, and the subsequent health systems responses, have brought into sharp focus the longstanding inequities for Indigenous populations,” co-author Dr Tristram Ingham (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Porou) from the Division of Health Science at the University of Otago states.