<p style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-size:12px">Dr Rachel Brown at her graduation on 03 August 2018</span></em></p>

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<p>After three years of intensive study, Whakauae scholar Dr Rachel Brown (Te Atiawa, Ng&#257;i Tahu) has been awarded a PhD in M&#257;ori health. The degree was conferred at an Auckland University of Technology (AUT) graduation ceremony held on 03 August 2018.</p>

<p>Rachel joined Whakauae in 2015 taking up a scholarship awarded to support her doctoral study. Her doctoral dissertation examined the systemic racism and discrimination experienced by M&#257;ori and Pasifika children, and their wh&#257;nau, in New Zealand&rsquo;s public hospitals. She drew on her own experience, as a mother of a child battling cancer, to investigate how wh&#257;nau &lsquo;cope&rsquo; when a child is in hospital with a life-threatening medical condition. That experience had been gruelling for Rachel and her Auckland-based wh&#257;nau. It led her to wonder how wh&#257;nau coped when caring for a child transferred to Starship, from outside of Auckland, and away from their support networks. Rachel interviewed 20 wh&#257;nau and 10 stakeholders using her findings to inform her report, <em>Surviving the System</em>.</p>

<p>Rachel found that, on top of dealing with a child&rsquo;s critical health issues, wh&#257;nau were constantly faced with coping with hospital system-level barriers and lack of cultural awareness. These avoidable factors created additional stresses at a time when the emotional, social and economic resources of wh&#257;nau were already being strained to breaking point. The coping focus for wh&#257;nau thus became more about &lsquo;surviving&rsquo; the system than about dealing with their child&rsquo;s ill-health. The health care system they experienced was organised to meet the needs of the &lsquo;typical&rsquo; P&#257;keh&#257; nuclear family rather than to accommodate diverse family forms and ethnic groups.</p>

<p>Rachel&rsquo;s dissertation also explored the role of Ronald McDonald House in caring for wh&#257;nau away from home. Ronald McDonald House provides accommodation and support for the wh&#257;nau of children, from outside the main centres, using secondary health care services. The study found that Ronald McDonald House was fulfilling an important role in caring for wh&#257;nau by being open to the diversity of wh&#257;nau forms and needs.&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</p>

<p>Whakauae Research Director, Dr Amohia Boulton jointly supervised Rachel&rsquo;s study with &shy;&shy;&shy;&shy;&shy;&shy;&shy;&shy;&shy;&shy;&shy;Dr Denise Wilson, Professor of M&#257;ori Health at AUT and Dr El-Shadan (Dan) Tautolo, Senior Research Fellow at AUT. <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/106067255/mori-and-pacific-families-face-discrimination-lack-of-support-in-health-system--research" target="_blank">Further information about the research is available here</a>.</p>

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