14 May IUHPE 23rd World conference on Health Promotion 2019 Rotorua

The Toi Tangata team attended the International Union for Health Promotion and Education conference in Rotorua 8th-11th April 2019

With the theme of Waiora: Promoting Planetary Health and Sustainable Development for all, the conference drew crowds from many corners of the world bringing with them many experts from many fields. These speakers from around the globe shared different kaupapa designed to make a difference for the health of many different populations. Sir Mason Durie and Sir Michael Marmot were standouts with their respective korero.

For more on what the conference was about go to http://www.iuhpe2019.com/en-gb/iuhpe-home

Toi Tangata kaimahi Crystal Pekepo and Darrio Penetito-Hemara presented at the conference alongside Dr Lisa Te Morenga. The workshop was titled Co-designing health services with Māori communities and included a demonstration on the process used to design the Mhealth tool, Ol@-Or@. The workshop proved extremely popular with all seats filled by many participants from different whenua which made for great learnings for both presenters and attendees. For more on Ol@-Or@ click here

Toi Tangata was also part of a collective which included Te Hiringa Hauora, Hāpai te Hauora and Te Rau Ora that created an Indigenous lounge at the IUHPE 2019 conference. The theme of the lounge was Ko te kai o te rangatira he kōrero! Connecting cultures through kōrero.

The purpose of the indigenous lounge was to provide opportunities to share innovative Māori approaches to health promotion and facilitate connections between and within indigenous peoples during the conference. During our time we saw Hāpai te Hauora, together with the help of local kairaranga and experts in weaving traditional pūrakau into practice, share with delegates the art of wahakura to support our mokopuna to thrive, how to weave putiputi, and how to design and use their own tītī tōrea. We at Toi Tangata demonstrated the work we have been doing applying systems thinking and Māori centred co-design practices into our work. We also shared established innovative programmes such has He Pī Ka Rere, a kaupapa Māori approach to physical activity and nutrition in Early Learning Environments. We also had the team from Te Rau Ora use the marae ātea to share kōrero around their work to improve Māori Health through leadership, education, research and evaluation, health workforce development and innovative, systemic transformation. These activities and the moments shared recognise the power of conversations to move ideas into practice, and reflected our theme of Ko te kai o te rangatira he kōrero! Connecting cultures through kōrero.