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Nadine Helen Riwai (Ngāti Porou, Te Aitanga a Mahaki, Te Uri o Hau, Ngai Takoto), The University of Auckland

Across Aotearoa, national cancer screening programmes—breast, bowel, cervical, and emerging areas such as lung screening—aim to save lives through early detection. Yet Māori continue to experience barriers to access, delayed diagnosis, and poorer outcomes. These inequities are not the result of individual behaviour, but of health systems that too often fail to uphold mana, dignity, and cultural safety for whānau.

Awardee: Leticia Joesphine Ngoi Vizor (Leticia Joesphine Ngoi Vizor), The University of Auckland

This research explores how Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei (NWŌ) whānau understand, experience, and sustain collective oranga and mental wellbeing, with the overarching aim of developing a culturally grounded iwi-led mental health strategy. The project emerged from the NWŌ Mental Health Forum, established in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdowns in response to rising isolation and mental distress. In 2022, following the tragic loss of a rangatahi to mate whakamomori (suicide), the forum was revitalised, prompting a renewed focus on oranga and mental wellbeing, and the development of an iwi-specific strategic response.

Awardee: Lisa Jean Kremer, University of Otago

The Awardee will undertake the Whakaaweawe Impact and Transformation Grant titled Creating digital assets and illustrations for whānau who have pēpi in the neonatal unit.

In the neonatal intensive care setting, whānau receive a significant amount of written and verbal information about multiple procedures, screening tests and diagnoses, medication use, and more. Most of the written medical information is created from a Western perspective. Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) A collaboration with a Māori artist led to the development of illustrations for a written resource on the diagnosis and treatment of ROP, as part of a 2024 honours project.

This project investigated how cultural concepts are incorporated into pharmacist preceptorship practices, with an emphasis on how these practices are explicitly demonstrated and communicated to pharmacy students during placements, identify knowledge gaps and challenges relevant to pharmacist precepting.

Awardee: Anna Adcock (Ngati Mutunga), Victoria University of Wellington

The Awardee will undertake the Whakaaweawe Impact and Transformation Grant titled Te Rito o te Harakeke: Collective Resilience and Relational Research with Whānau Māori.

This project supports the dissemination of doctoral research through presentation at the Indigenous Futures Unbound: Indigenous knowledges leading transformative futures conference, held on Kabi Kabi Country, Sunshine Coast, Australia, in November 2025. He Tamariki Kokoti Tau was a longitudinal Kaupapa Māori study with whānau Māori whose pēpi were born preterm. The PhD research, Te Rito o te Harakeke, followed whānau through birth, neonatal intensive care, hospitalisation, and transitions home. It illuminated whānau experiences of resilience and aroha, showing that preterm birth is not only a medical event but a collective journey of connection, cultural continuity, and Indigenous thrivance.

This internship was a literature review evaluating the available academic research pertaining to the role of wairua in whare tangata ora. It responds to the serious deficit of academic outputs in this area and contributes to the rationale on why it is needed.