Lanuola Asiasiga

• Massey University

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on Aotearoa (New Zealand), with whānau Māori (Māori families) particularly hard hit. In order to meet the challenges posed by COVID- 19, the Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency (https://whanauora.nz) used a kaupapa Māori (Māori way of doing) approach to workforce development. This involved applying core M...

The Paediatric Otorhinolaryngology (ORL) Pathway Redesign for Equity Project is an initiative funded by the Ministry of Health, for the purpose of designing and implementing a regional service (Northern Region) that provides equitable access for children, particularly tamariki Māori and Pasifika children, to paediatric ORL services via an end-...

Background: Alcohol use is an area of challenge for health promotion internationally. The alcohol industry operates as a key commercial determinant of health in that its actions contribute to alcohol misuse, resulting in a range of health and social harms to individuals, families and communities. Rainbow people (including those who identify as les...

A range of research reports that many gender and sexually diverse people drink alcohol at heavy levels. This study used 24 focus groups to explore shared understandings of alcohol use among gender and sexually diverse people living in New Zealand. An inductive, data-driven thematic analysis was employed to identify explanations for heavy drinking a...

Focus group interviews conducted with Aotearoa New Zealand–born Pasifika young adults aged 18–25 years highlighted their intense apprehension about the diminishing abilities of New Zealand–born Pasifika people to speak their ancestral/heritage Pasifika languages in Aotearoa. Some Pasifika languages are also declining at their homeland wellsprings....

Children conducting research and engaging in ‘adult’ domains such as urban planning challenge perceptions of children as merely ‘adult becomings’ — perceptions which, along with lack of pathways for participation, have largely excluded children from effective participation in the public realm. This paper considers two urban participatory projects i...

Children have as much “right” to the city as adult citizens, yet they lose out in the urban spatial justice stakes. Built environments prioritizing motor vehicles, a default urban planning position that sees children as belonging in child-designated areas, and safety discourses, combine to restrict children’s presence and opportunities for play, re...

Background: Participation in community life is vital for health and wellbeing, promoting a sense of belonging, networks of social support and opportunities for physical activity. Disabled young people have lower levels of mobility and participation in recreational activities (physical, social and cultural), education and employment, than their pee...

This paper investigates children’s experiences of hyperdiversity in public spaces in inner city and suburban neighbourhoods in Auckland, New Zealand. As children walk through, and talk about, their everyday places of play and mobility they sense and reveal material and relational diversity in the places and people they encounter. We examine tempora...

This study examines aspects of neighbourhood social environments (namely, neighbourhood safety, cohesion and connection) and child-specific built environment attributes in relation to children's independent mobility. The results suggest that children aged 8-13 years with parents who perceive their neighbourhood as more cohesive and more connected,...

Children’s right to play – as enshrined in Article 31 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) – is important for children’s cognitive, social, and physical development and for their everyday well-being. Neighborhood affordances – formal and informal – provide more (or less) opportunities for informal active play and socia...

INTRODUCTION: New Zealand children's physical activity, including independent mobility and active travel, has declined markedly over recent decades. The Neighbourhoods for Active Kids (NfAK) study examines how neighbourhood built environments are associated with the independent mobility, active travel, physical activity and neighbourhood experience...

Introduction New Zealand children's physical activity, including independent mobility and active travel, has declined markedly over recent decades. The Neighbourhoods for Active Kids (NfAK) study examines how neighbourhood built environments are associated with the independent mobility, active travel, physical activity and neighbourhood experiences...

Children’s right to play – as enshrined in Article 31 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) – is important for children’s cognitive, social, and physical development and for their everyday well-being. Neighborhood affordances – formal and informal – provide more (or less) opportunities for informal active play and socia...

Active travel is associated with improved health and development outcomes in children. Accurate detection of children's travel behaviors and routes, however, is problematic. Travel diaries are often used to collect information on children's travel behaviors, yet no evidence for the accuracy of this methodology exists. This study investigated the va...

A number of studies have identified that gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (GLBTI) people have poorer mental health than the general population. This article describes current mental health promotion and service provision for GLBTI people in New Zealand, and the views of stakeholders on current service delivery and concerns facing t...

Children's independent mobility and physical activity levels are declining in Western countries. In the past 20 years New Zealand children's active travel (walking and cycling) has dropped on average from 130 to 72 minutes per week, and those travelling by car to school have increased from 31% to 58%. This paper describes parents' understandings of...

International research clearly demonstrates that lesbian, gay, bisexual men and women and transgender (LGBT) people experience poorer mental health than heterosexual people. Despite this robust evidence, one important gap in New Zealand is an understanding of the mental health issues of this group. A qualitative research project was commissioned to...

Objectives To describe the development and use of a quality improvement service self-evaluation tool within Pacific addiction services in New Zealand. Methods The study involved two phases: (i) a development phase; and (ii) a testing phase. In Phase I, a preliminary tool was developed and piloted with two Pacific addiction drugs services. It was mo...

The aim of the current study is to examine the impacts of gambling among four different ethnic groups within New Zealand (i.e., Maori, Pakeha, Pacific peoples, and Chinese and Korean peoples). Four thousand and sixty-eight Pakeha, 1,162 Maori, 1,031 Pacific people, and 984 Chinese and Korean people took part in a telephone interview that assessed t...

Physical activity is essential for optimal physical and psychological health but substantial declines in children's activity levels have occurred in New Zealand and internationally. Children's independent mobility (i.e., outdoor play and traveling to destinations unsupervised), an integral component of physical activity in childhood, has also decli...

Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death and hospitalisation among New Zealand children, with indigenous Māori and ethnic minority Pacific children significantly over represented in these statistics. International research has shown that many children hospitalised for injury, as well as their families experience high levels of stress,...

Several quantitative studies in the international literature have described disparities in the provision of and access to health services for a variety of health conditions among 'minority' populations. This New Zealand qualitative study aimed to explore and describe the experiences of indigenous Māori and Pacific families (both minority population...

To describe the alcohol consumption patterns and related harms of some Pacific peoples (Samoan, Cook Islands Maori, Tongan, Niuean, Fijian, and Tokelauan) living in Aotearoa (New Zealand), and to draw comparisons with measures from the general New Zealand population. The Pacific Drugs and Alcohol Consumption Survey (PDACS) was carried out with 1103...

Thesis (M.A. Applied)--Victoria University of Wellington, 1994. Includes bibliography.