Dr Jesse Kokaua is a Cook Islands statistician and senior research fellow in the Va’a O Tautai – Centre for Pacific Health in the Division of Health Sciences at the University of Otago, Dunedin. Dr Kokaua has made a significant contribution to advancing the Pacific Strategic Framework within the University of Otago, including publications regarding student support, graduate outcomes and providing operational data management support for his workplace and the Office for Pacific Development. He provides statistical evidence that contributes to the efficacy of the support programmes set up for Pacific students at the University. Jesse has worked in the public health sector and was employed as an evaluator for Pasifika Futures. He retains a strong association with the latter and continues to collaborate in research projects with members of their evaluation team.

As one of a small group of Pacific biostatisticians his ability to contribute to both statistical analyses and cultural appropriateness is both rare and valuable. Dr Kokaua has successfully gained multiple HRC grants, supported undergraduate and post graduate students and encouraged a supportive research environment through biostatistical support and mentorship, particularly for Pacific students and colleagues. His HRC funded research investigates the benefits of education to the health of Pacific families and includes findings from the Graduate Longitudinal Study NZ, Pacific Island Families study, New Zealand’s IDI and a series of Talanoa of Pacific families. While studies have looked at the socio-economic or health benefits associated with education, few sought to view these with a Pasifika lens to investigate generational differences in health outcomes and their association with education.

He has also driven theoretical and methodological advancement for Pacific health through the development of a Tivaivai model which incorporates Pacific perspectives into quantitative interpretations. He has published in the areas of health, predominantly mental health, with a keen focus upon the needs of Pacific communities.

Dr Amohia Boulton (Ngāti Ranginui, Ngai te Rangi, Ngāti Pukenga, Ngāti Mutunga and Te Āti Awa o te Waka a Māui), is the Director of Whakauae Research Services Ltd, the only tribally owned and mandated health research centre in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Amohia also holds Adjunct Professor positions at both the Health Services Research Centre, Victoria University of Wellington and in the Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences at Auckland University of Technology (AUT). 

A former policy analyst and Private Secretary to the Associate Minister of Māori Affairs Parekura Horomia, Amohia holds a PhD in Māori Studies from Massey University, Palmerston North as well as MA Appl (Soc Sci Res), BA(Hons) and BA degrees from Victoria University of Wellington. She is a former Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) Māori Health Training Fellow; an HRC Erihapeti Rehu Murchie Postdoctoral Fellow; and an International Scholar in Indigenous Health through the Aboriginal Capacity and Development Research Environment (ACADRE) initiative. Following the completion of her postdoctoral studies, where she spent time as a Visiting Professor at the University of Northern British Columbia, Canada, Amohia left the university sector to work as a researcher at Whakauae Research Services Ltd where she became the Director in 2016.  

Amohia is a kaupapa Māori health services researcher of some 20 years’ experience. Her research focuses on the relationship between, and contribution of, government policy to improving wellbeing outcomes for Māori. Under Amohia’s leadership, Whakauae has pursued a vision of “transforming Māori lives through excellent research” working with Whakauae’s tribal owners, university colleagues, and community partners to undertake excellent health policy and health services research that advances an equity agenda for Māori health. This vision has resulted most recently in a five-year, Health Research Council of New Zealand-funded programme of research entitled Kia Puawai ake ngā uri whakatupu: Flourishing future generations premised on the belief that Māori must develop and lead their own solutions if real system change is to be achieved.  

Amohia is the 2021 recipient of the Health Research Council of New Zealand’s Te Tohu Rapuora Medal’s for leadership, excellence, and contribution to advancing Māori health knowledge. This year, Amohia was inducted as Fellow of the Australian Evaluation Society; one of only three Indigenous people to be recognised in this manner. 

Since arriving in Aotearoa from India as a four year old Jeph Mathias has oscillated around this messy planet. He navigated school in Auckland, university in England, taught in an illegal multi-racial school in apartheid South Africa, volunteered at Mother Teresa’s in Kolkata, returned to Auckland medical school but left to trap crocodiles in the Amazon. Back in safe Aotearoa Jeph started doctoring in Nelson and began specialising in Hamilton but couldn’t resist the magical, messy world out there. With his wife Kaaren Jeph left NZ medicine for Cambodian slum life, then Colombia’s guerrilla war with MSF. Paramilitary death threats and Kaaren’s belly full of twins brought them back to Aotearoa so Jeph resuscitated his Emergency Medicine while moonlighting through a Massey Dev. Studies MPhil. It was medicine and nappies on Banks Peninsula until the big wide wild world broke in… Jeph, Kaaren and kids lived in the Himalayas 2006-20 zooming out from stethoscopes to systems, structures and inequalities. They caught (only just!) the last pre-pandemic plane to Godzone.

Now in Sydenham, Jeph’s evaluating a Pakistan refugee programme, works with Guatemalan adolescents on monitoring, is developing an iteration of Realist Evaluation with an Australian team and just launched a participatory Outcome Harvest with high-security prisoners in Ōtautahi.... but another shoulder-tap from the wide, wild world is surely coming.