Executive Summary

In New Zealand, health inequities for Māori (Indigenous peoples of New Zealand) children are not random and exist because of the perpetual impacts of colonization, including structural and institutional racism. Māori children suffer significantly higher hospitalization rates, poorer health outcomes, and twice the avoidable mortality rates of non-Māori children. Starship, New Zealand’s National Children's Hospital, asserts that inequities in child health are preventable, unnecessary, costly, and breach human rights.

Starship has been devoid of Māori leadership before 2021. Now six visionary Māori leaders have set Starship’s strategic direction towards transforming the current child health structures and systems by ensuring an equitable mokopuna(child)-centric, whānau(family)-focused system founded on mātauranga Māori (indigenous knowledge systems) and āo tapere (world of play).

Through the creation of an indigenous pediatric research center, a new service model will be developed and trialed within a clinical setting. The final goal is building a new hospital that enables flourishing mokopuna.

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