PhD Thesis - ResearchSpace@Auckland - The University of Auckland

day by a community health worker was very high. 95 The report concluded that ‘the
personal approach…does yield results’. 96
Those Maori and Pacific Island parents who were interviewed were all in favour of
immunisation and had had their own children immunised, although due to the
smallness of the sample they could not be classed as representative of their
communities. 97 Nevertheless, most Pacific Island and Maori parents seemed to be
happy to have their children immunised once they understood the nature of
immunisations and the venue was accessible for them. Certainly in the 1980s,
although leaflets had been printed in various Island and Asian languages, the
information was not reaching all the parents for whom it was intended. Other methods
of promoting immunisation needed to be utilised by the Health Department in
addition to general advertising campaigns.
Health Committees
General concerns over the health of Maori and Pacific Islanders in the 1970s and
1980s had led to the establishment of Maori and Polynesian Health Committees. They
were to make recommendations to the Health Department on health issues affecting
Maori and Pacific Island people, including immunisation. 98 In addition to the broad
social changes of the 1970s and 1980s, these were times of significant change for
Maori. By 1986 almost 80 percent of the Maori population were urban dwellers. 99
This had often resulted in a loss of contact with hapu and iwi and the difficulty in
adjusting to the predominantly Pakeha culture in the cities led to the establishment of
urban marae to forge new avenues of support. Concerns that Maori culture and
tradition were not valued by a European-orientated society, coupled with the influence
of international movements such as the Civil Rights campaign in the United States,
led to the growth of Maori protest groups in the 1970s and 1980s. Michael King has
argued that the subsequent notice taken by Pakeha of Maori culture as it was brought
95 ibid., p.11.
96 ibid.
97 Interviews were conducted with five mothers with either a Maori or Pacific Island background.
98 Appendices to the Journal of the House of Representatives (AJHR), 1973, E-10, p.21. A Maori
Health Committee had originally been set up in the early 1960s along with eight others, but by the mid-
1960s only met from ‘time to time’. AJHR, 1963, H-31, p.87.
99 ibid.
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