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The PHA - an informed, collaborative and strong advocate for public health.

Public Health Champion 2003  -  Professor Mason Durie

Rangitane, Ngati Kauwhata, Ngati Raukawa

Mason Durie became an advocate for public health as a result of work in mental health. While never intending to work specifically in the public health field, his work in psychiatry led him to the realisation that health, particularly mental health, is a function of the environment in which people live.

Raised in Feilding, Mason Durie attended Te Aute College then Otago University. After a two year internship at Palmerston North, he traveled to McGill University in Canada to do post-graduate study in psychiatry.

Professor Durie says many of his ideas about people's health stem from his time as part of a community psychiatry team, when he realised health is closely related to the environments and experiences people have at home and in their communities and with their people. He discovered only later this was in fact a public health approach and it is the one he brought back to New Zealand to incorporate into his 20 years of psychiatric practice.

The public health model was further fuelled by his growing interest in Māori health and especially the philosophies inherent in the Māori development approach where autonomy, integrated social, cultural and economic development were emphasised.

In 1988 he began work on the Lange government's Royal Commission on Social Policy. He says those two years on the Royal Commission, one of the biggest research efforts News Zealand has ever seen, greatly affected the way he approached his job.

Professor Durie says although some politicians had a problem with it, the Commission's findings have been extensively used across departments of state. "Among other things, there was some agreement that the Treaty of Waitangi was as relevant to social programmes as it was to economic policy."

He says what marked the Commission out from earlier similar exercises was the effort it made to hear from Māori communities.

"I was very much aware at the end of that experience that the way Māori saw social policy and the way Māori were articulating their aspirations for development had a different base and a different reality from what others were saying."

And he says today that of all his achievements, and based on what he learned working on the Royal Commission, he is most pleased with having been able to contribute to the recognition that there is a Māori approach to health and that health promotion requires Māori input.

One of his most-quoted contributions to the field is the concept of Whare Tapu Wha, which is his model of the Māori understanding of health. In the model, there are four dimensions to health: taha tinana (physical wellbeing), taha hinengaro (mental and emotional wellbeing), taha whānau (social well-being) and taha wairua (spiritual wellbeing). Each of these four dimensions of hauora influences and supports the others - a classic public health approach!

In 1998, he arrived at Massey University to head up the new Department of Māori Studies and today holds the positions of Professor of Māori Research and Development as well as the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Māori).

He says at Massey he built on what he had gained in his understanding of health and in social policy. He began to look at Māori-centred approaches to research with Māori experiences, values and aspirations firmly embedded in research methodologies.

"You don't say, 'How do I adapt this approach to Māori?' You start from the premise 'What is important to Māori' and build round it," he says.

In te ao Māori, the Māori world, Mason Durie is known as a softly-spoken man who should always be listened to. He is seen as someone who is able to stand above narrow rivalries, which is one of the reasons he was chosen to serve as the secretary of the Māori Congress for six years.

This father of four and grandfather of 12 serves on the Families Commission and heads the Guardians Group of Secondary Futures, a project that is exploring schooling in the longer term future. He has also contributed to the National Health Committee, the Mental Health Foundation, the Mental Health Commission and the Health Research Council.

From Massey, he has launched a raft of projects which are building up an unprecedented amount of empirical data about Māori life and society. The research now emerging from Massey is being used for planning by government, local councils and iwi runanga.

With all the progress that has been made, Mason Durie continues to passionately believe that Māori people need to be able to have the information, capability and resources to prevent illness and disease, and to achieve full potential themselves.

He says human resources are needed; a well educated workforce, highly skilled in health promotion and health education. And he says that education has to be high in quality, relevant and closely aligned with health.

With everything Mason Durie has achieved and continues to achieve it is not surprising that when asked about what he does in his spare time, he is stumped! "I'm never not working," he says. "Even when I am mowing the lawns, I am thinking about the next paper I have to write."