Māori Health Strategy: Engagement Lessons

Aotearoa New Zealand’s new Māori Health Strategy 2026 – Whiria Te Ora was released in August, setting the direction for improving Māori health outcomes over the next five years.

For engagement professionals, there’s another document worth reading alongside the Strategy: the Ministry of Health – Manatū Hauora has published an Insights Report specifically documenting the engagement that informed its development.

The report brings together insights gathered from Māori communities, health providers, iwi and sector partners during engagement undertaken in September and October 2024.

Connecting Community Insight With Strategy

The resulting Strategy shows several clear connections between what was heard and where the health system is heading.

Engagement helped shape calls for a greater focus on prevention, stronger leadership and greater accountability. The Strategy also emphasises local knowledge and relationships, locally driven solutions, and a stronger connection between communities and national decision-making.

For engagement practitioners, the useful lesson is not simply that engagement occurred. It’s that community and sector insight needs a pathway into strategy, implementation and accountability.

The Strategy gives Iwi-Māori Partnership Boards an ongoing role in bringing forward the health needs, aspirations and lived experiences of Māori communities to inform decisions about service planning, commissioning and performance. Its evaluation approach will also draw on whānau voice and community-generated intelligence alongside quantitative data.

Keep the Engagement Going

That ongoing connection matters.

Engagement undertaken to develop a strategy can provide valuable insight at one point in time. Maintaining relationships and creating ways for community insight to continue informing implementation helps organisations understand whether their decisions are working in practice — and where they may need to adapt.

For health engagement professionals, Whiria Te Ora provides a useful example of engagement extending beyond strategy development into the systems intended to support delivery, monitoring and improvement.

READ THE ENGAGEMENT INSIGHTS REPORT

Read the Māori Health Strategy