Ā mātou kaupapa | Our approach
In healthier environments, children learn better, workplaces are more productive, people are healthier and happier, and communities thrive.
Healthy Families NZ is a large scale prevention initiative that aims to create a healthier Aotearoa by addressing the systems and environments that impact our health and wellbeing.
Healthy Families East Cape is one of 11 teams across eleven localities embedded in a range of lead providers including Iwi, Whānau Ora, Local Government, Regional Sports Trusts and Pacific-led Social Change organisations. Each locality has its own unique systems and environments that impact the health and wellbeing of the people who live, learn, work or play there. Each lead provider was chosen as they were best placed to work in partnership with the communities and organisations in their locality to create sustainable change. Taking a locality approach acknowledges that the most effective and sustainable solutions to our health and wellbeing challenges are best driven by the people who are most affected.
Our journey has been to implement a national initiative that responds to the unique context of each locality. Through aligning ourselves to our guiding principles, being outcome focused, maintaining a high-trust partnership with the Te Whatu Ora, lead providers, and community champions, we have tested our approach, learnt and adapted along the way, in order to create significant impact with our communities. In doing so, we have built a workforce that is skilled in social innovation, systems thinking and comfortable to learn by doing.
Our approach is about understanding the environments that affect our community’s health and wellbeing. We work with local community partners and stakeholders to design and coordinate changes to social and physical built environments that could make a big difference in reducing the risk factors for chronic disease and in increasing equity.
Healthy Families NZ is a large scale prevention initiative that aims to create a healthier Aotearoa by addressing the systems and environments that impact our health and wellbeing.
Healthy Families East Cape is one of 11 teams across eleven localities embedded in a range of lead providers including Iwi, Whānau Ora, Local Government, Regional Sports Trusts and Pacific-led Social Change organisations. Each locality has its own unique systems and environments that impact the health and wellbeing of the people who live, learn, work or play there. Each lead provider was chosen as they were best placed to work in partnership with the communities and organisations in their locality to create sustainable change. Taking a locality approach acknowledges that the most effective and sustainable solutions to our health and wellbeing challenges are best driven by the people who are most affected.
Our journey has been to implement a national initiative that responds to the unique context of each locality. Through aligning ourselves to our guiding principles, being outcome focused, maintaining a high-trust partnership with the Te Whatu Ora, lead providers, and community champions, we have tested our approach, learnt and adapted along the way, in order to create significant impact with our communities. In doing so, we have built a workforce that is skilled in social innovation, systems thinking and comfortable to learn by doing.
Our approach is about understanding the environments that affect our community’s health and wellbeing. We work with local community partners and stakeholders to design and coordinate changes to social and physical built environments that could make a big difference in reducing the risk factors for chronic disease and in increasing equity.
- It’s a move away from disconnected, short-term, one-off approaches, and a move towards working collaboratively with partners across sectors who share a passion for change.
- It’s about aligning what is working, building capability and putting into motion new and innovative solutions and strengthening our whole of community, collective response to the needs of whānau and communities – creating a platform for those with the commitment and passion to drive change at the scale and pace needed to build a strong prevention system.
- Focusing on equity helps us to prioritise resources and efforts where they are needed the most and data helps us prepare and connect whānau and communities with future opportunities.
Our Roadmap to Prevention
We bring the lived experience of whānau to all that we do.Insights and understandings will inform our activations andsupport systems leaders to prioritise our collective call to action.We have created our roadmap to prevention which provides a high-level snapshot of the direction for the implementation of the Healthy Families NZ approach in our locality - Te Tairāwhiti, Ōpōtiki and on the East Cape.
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Our Areas for Activation
Food Security & Food Sovereignty
Everyone eats. In a community where our people face some of the most dire health statistics in Aotearoa, we strive for a future where everyone has access to affordable and nourishing kai. We envision a local and sovereign kai system that is circular and sustainable, and protects our natural resources. Play and Being Active Many of us want to live in vibrant neighbourhoods, where we can easily get to work, and access school, shops and services. We want to feel safe and comfortable moving around, in ways that are good for our health and take care of the planet. We strive to reinforce these ideas using tactical urbanism techniques such as pilots, pop-ups, street parties, play streets and interim treatments to environments that make it easier and faster to transition our streets to safer and more liveable spaces. Community Resiliency We know for certain that the effects of COVID-19 will create worldwide disruption, with the after effects felt for decades to come. How we respond to this as a nation and a region will shape the future for our tamariki and mokopuna. We will embrace change and we will move forward with confidence.Together we will support our communities to exercise their authority to improve their health and wellbeing. Placemaking We will leverage our unique physical, cultural and social identities to strengthen the connection between our people and the places we share. We will capitalise on our unique physical, cultural and social identities, assets and potential to create quality public spaces that contribute to our happiness, health and wellbeing. |
Our Guiding Principles
Healthy Families East Cape is guided by nine principles: Te Tiriti o Waitangi, leadership, equity of outcome, line of sight, experimentation, adaptation, collaboration for collective impact, workforce and implementation at scale.
Commitment to Te Tiriti O Waitangi
Healthy Families NZ is committed to fulfilling the special relationship between Māori and the Crown under Te Tiriti.
Healthy Families NZ prioritizes the inclusion and protection of Mātauranga Māori as an important enabler of Māori health and wellbeing. We collaborate with partners across our communities to improve Māori health outcomes and achieve pae ora.
Māori decision-making and participation at all levels of planning and implementation is critical.
Healthy Families NZ prioritizes the inclusion and protection of Mātauranga Māori as an important enabler of Māori health and wellbeing. We collaborate with partners across our communities to improve Māori health outcomes and achieve pae ora.
Māori decision-making and participation at all levels of planning and implementation is critical.
Leadership |
Equity of Outcome |
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Leadership is supported at all levels of the prevention effort including senior managers, elected officials, and health champions in our schools, businesses, workplaces, marae, sporting clubs and other settings in the community.
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Health equity is the attainment of the highest level of health for all people.
Healthy Families NZ will have an explicit focus on improving Māori health and reducing inequities for groups at increased risk of chronic diseases. Māori participation at all levels of the planning and implementation of Healthy Families NZ is critical. |
Line of Sight |
Experimentation |
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The line of sight provides a transparent view on how investment in policy is translated into measured impacts in communities, ensuring best value from every dollar spent on prevention.
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Small scale experiments provide insight into the most effective interventions to address chronic disease. These experiments are underpinned by evidence and experience, and are monitored and designed to then be amplified across the system, if they prove effective.
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Adaptation |
Collaboration for Collective Impact |
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Strengthening the prevention system requires constant reflection, learning and adaption to ensure strategies are timely, relevant and sustainable.
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Long term commitment is required by multiple partners, from different sectors, at multiple levels, to generate greater collective impact on the health of all New Zealanders.
Knowledge is co-created and interventions co-produced, supported by a shared measurement system, mutually reinforcing activities, ongoing communication and a ‘backbone’ support organisation. |
Implementation at Scale |
Workforce |
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Strategies are delivered at a scale that impacts the health and wellbeing of a large number of the population, in the places where they spend their time – in schools, workplaces and communities.
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A dedicated prevention workforce who are embedded within their local community, driving and supporting systems change. Healthy Families NZ kaimahi are skilled in systems thinking, creating adaptive responses to complex issues in local and cultural settings, and are able to identify prevention activity with potential for sustainable outcomes.
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Mindsets for Social Innovation
To build social connectedness, we use these mindsets for social innovation to form the practice framework for our work – they describe our way of being, what we need to believe and how we need to think, to tackle complex challenges we face today.
The following mindsets for social innovation were developed by Innovate Change prior to its merge with Innovation Unit.
The following mindsets for social innovation were developed by Innovate Change prior to its merge with Innovation Unit.
Curiosity | Whaowhia te kete mātauranga
Being radically open; and not being burdened by expertise.
Learning by doing | Ako – Mā tini mā mano ka rapa te whai
Social innovators have a preference to learn through action, and use prototypes as ways to take action early, get feedback and to improve our ideas
Being in the grey | Kia noho tau i te rangirua
Being comfortable with ambiguity, not being sure, predictable, not knowing what comes next, and not necessarily having a clear plan or solution(s)
People are the experts | Rangatiratanga – He aha te mea nui o te ao, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata
People know their lives better than anyone else; we privilege them and their views and value participatory approaches
Comfort with failure | Ahakoa nga heke, he hāneanea te haere
Social innovators are not afraid of failure, they cherish the learning opportunities failure brings
Being radically open; and not being burdened by expertise.
Learning by doing | Ako – Mā tini mā mano ka rapa te whai
Social innovators have a preference to learn through action, and use prototypes as ways to take action early, get feedback and to improve our ideas
Being in the grey | Kia noho tau i te rangirua
Being comfortable with ambiguity, not being sure, predictable, not knowing what comes next, and not necessarily having a clear plan or solution(s)
People are the experts | Rangatiratanga – He aha te mea nui o te ao, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata
People know their lives better than anyone else; we privilege them and their views and value participatory approaches
Comfort with failure | Ahakoa nga heke, he hāneanea te haere
Social innovators are not afraid of failure, they cherish the learning opportunities failure brings