All New Zealanders deserve to live longer, healthier, more independent lives, and enjoy the same access to timely, quality health care irrespective of location, financial resources and ethnicity. Health equity for Māori is one of the major challenges to achieving this. Whakapuāwaitia Ngāi Māori 2030 provides direction for workforce development priorities and will support the health and disability sector to:

• deliver on health targets that cannot be achieved without improvements to Māori health outcomes
• lift health sector performance through recognition that clinical and cultural competence are inseparable and greater integration of Māori cultural competence will enhance Māori engagement, and access to and through healthcare
• improve the health of older people, given the Māori population over 65 is expected to almost triple from 2006 to 20261and the high proportion of DHB hospitalisations that are Māori kaumātua, and
• deliver services in a way that enhances and supports Whānau Ora.

Evidence indicates the Aotearoa New Zealand health system is contributing to poorer health outcomes for Māori, who are less likely to receive quality hospital care, and more likely to have higher rates of diseases and disabilities, higher avoidable, amenable and infant mortality, and lower life expectancy3. In 2001 the Ministry of Health calculated the burden of disease for Māori through disability adjusted life years (DALY) to be 75% greater than the age-standardised DALY for non- Māori. Opportunities to lift Māori health gains and make substantial health and societal cost savings, of more than $6.8billion a year5, remain largely unrealised.

The growing Māori population will place increasing pressure on all health and disability services and workforce requirements. Māori health outcomes are projected to deteriorate, in the next 10-20 years. Examples include an expected 183% increase in the over 65 years of age Māori population is predicted to result in a 220% increase in health care consultations6, the number of Māori who die.