Healthy Families NZ has 11 teams across ten localities embedded in a range of lead providers including, Iwi, Whānau Ora, Local Government, Regional Sports Trusts and Pacific Social Change organisations.

Healthy Families East Cape is situated in Ōpōtiki through to Turanganui-a-Kiwa/Gisborne, and covers the entire East Cape region along State Highway 35, working within our lead provider Te Ao Hou Trust.

Our goal is for all New Zealanders to enjoy good health, to have social and physical environments that enable healthy food and physical activity choices, being smoke free, drinking alcohol only in moderation and increasing mental health resilience and well-being.

Healthy Families NZ is a move away from disconnected, small scale and time limited projects and interventions, towards a whole of community approach that makes sustainable long term changes to the systems that influence the health and well-being of whānau and communities.

Healthy Families NZ continues to adapt, to reflect the unique context of New Zealand communities, and the special relationship between Māori and the Crown, including obligations under Te Tiriti o Waitangi. The Healthy Families NZ Principles include an explicit focus on equity, improving Māori health and improving health equity for groups at increased risk of chronic diseases.

Healthy Families NZ takes an innovative, system-building approach to prevention, including:

• Targeted community-level investment into the Building Blocks of a Prevention System;

• Bringing community leadership together in a united effort for better health;

• A dedicated prevention workforce who are embedded within their local community, driving and supporting systems change across the region;

• National level support and strategies to encourage a whole system approach;

• Dedicated strategic communications functions across all locations, harnessing the power of story telling to amplify the collective impact of the initiative, and accelerate activation at scale;

• Multi-year evaluation that identifies key themes, scalable initiatives, and builds a national picture of the progress and impact of Healthy Families NZ over time.

Our approach

Healthy Families East Cape’s approach is in accordance with the Healthy Families NZ Te Kāhui Māori approach as follows:

Tahi: To influence the health prevention system across the population by focusing on the environments where whānau live, learn, work and play. To do this means working collaboratively with communities and systems stakeholders to think differently about the underlying causes of poor health.

Rua: Utilising the process of co-design to test new ideas, assumptions and prototypes, which aim to strengthen the prevention systems and normalize positive health behavior.

Toru: Convene and support collaborations to safely experiment in prevention, to accelerate progress, identify levers for change, ensure sustainability, and share the learning across sector and regions.

Whā: Support regional leaders to unlock support and provision for improving health equity in Aotearoa New Zealand.