Pacific families navigating responsiveness and children's sleep in Aotearoa New Zealand.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: George M
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8590065 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:ObjectiveThe objective of the current study was to identify challenges of making and sustaining healthy lifestyle changes for families with children/adolescents affected by obesity, who were referred to a multicomponent healthy lifestyle assessment and intervention programme in Aotearoa/New Zealand (NZ).DesignSecondary qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews.SettingTaranaki region of Aotearoa/NZ.ParticipantsThirty-eight interviews with parents/caregivers (n 42) of children/adolescents who had previously been referred to a family-focused multidisciplinary programme for childhood obesity intervention, who identified challenges of making healthy lifestyle changes. Participants had varying levels of engagement, including those who declined contact after their referral.ResultsParticipant-identified challenges included financial cost, impact of the food environment, time pressures, stress, maintaining consistency across households, independence in adolescence, concern for mental health and frustration when not seeing changes in weight status.ConclusionsParticipants recognised a range of factors that contributed towards their ability to make and sustain change, including factors at the wider socio-environmental level beyond their immediate control. Even with the support of a multidisciplinary healthy lifestyle programme, participants found it difficult to make sustained changes within an obesogenic environment. Healthy lifestyle intervention programmes and families' abilities to make and sustain changes require alignment of prevention efforts, focusing on policy changes to improve the food environment and eliminate structural inequities.
| S-EPMC8094428 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BACKGROUND:While many Aotearoa/New Zealanders are receiving excellent palliative care the Pacific populations have limited access to available hospice and palliative care services. Little research has been conducted to identify barriers unique to Pacific populations accessing these services. The purpose of this study was to explore key stakeholders' perspectives on the determinants of low access among Pacific populations to these services. METHODS:Forty-five semi-structured interviews were conducted face-to-face with hospice patients and their families, hospice/health providers and key informants from the Auckland and Wellington region of Aotearoa/New Zealand. The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim and a thematic analysis was carried out by identifying, coding and categorising patterns in the data. Identified themes were then discussed further to determine the relevance of the data grouped by theme. RESULTS:Five interrelated themes affecting access emerged: perception of hospice (often negative) through lack of accurate information, but changing; families' role to look after their own and sick elderly; hospice experiences; continuity of care in the community and the need for information and communication. CONCLUSION:Hospice and associated palliative care services are under-utilised and commonly misunderstood among Pacific populations in Aotearoa/New Zealand. There is active support following appropriate information received, hence the need for community education and culturally appropriate hospice and palliative services. Inadequate inter-professional communication contributes to polypharmacy and inefficiency in continuity of care across all levels. The Pacific individual is one component of a collective that is critical in major decisions in end-of-life and life changing situations. The findings may guide policies and further research to improve Hospice and Palliative services in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
| S-EPMC7346658 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Pacific people continue to carry a disproportionately heavy social and health burden relative to their non-Pacific peers in New Zealand, and those with less formal education are experiencing social and health declines. Improving education and educational needs is seen as being central to decreasing these health inequities. While expansive, the empirical evidence-base supporting this stance is relatively weak and increasingly conflicting. Using a large birth cohort of 1,368 eligible Pacific children, together with their mothers and fathers, this study longitudinally investigates the relationship between paternal education levels and sentinel measures of their children's physical health, mental health and health risk taking behaviours during late childhood and early adolescence. In adjusted analyses, it was found that mothers and fathers who undertook further schooling over the 0-6 years postpartum period had children with significantly lower logarithmically transformed body mass index increases at 11-years and 14-years measurement waves compared to 9-years levels than those who did not study (p = 0.017 and p = 0.022, respectively). Furthermore, fathers who undertook further schooling over this 0-6 years postpartum period also had children with significantly lower odds of risk taking behaviours (p = 0.013). These results support policy aimed at increasing educational opportunities for Pacific people in New Zealand.
| S-EPMC8964731 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundDeveloping cultural responsiveness among physiotherapists is considered essential to promote quality and equity in healthcare provision for our culturally diverse populations. The aim of this study was to evaluate how entry-level physiotherapy programs in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) design curricula to foster the development of cultural responsiveness in physiotherapy students. Further, the challenges of integrating educational content and approaches, and the perceptions of the effectiveness of these curricula were also explored.MethodsA cross-sectional telephone survey with closed and open-ended questions, was conducted with 18 participants representing 24 entry-level physiotherapy programs (82% of all programs) in Australia and NZ between May and September 2017. Data were analysed descriptively in the form of frequencies, percentages or ratios as appropriate. Open-ended responses were thematically analysed.ResultsResults suggest variability in the structure, and teaching and assessment methods used across all programs. The majority of programs appeared to rely on didactic teaching methods, along with knowledge based and implicit assessment methods. The main challenges reported were that cultural responsiveness was thought to be perceived by academic staff as unimportant and that the curriculum was perceived to be 'overcrowded'. Participants also felt there was room for improvement despite perceiving the curriculum to be effective at fostering cultural responsiveness.ConclusionResults provide insight into the educational content and approaches integrated in entry-level physiotherapy curricula in Australia and NZ, and suggest opportunities for further research and development to foster cultural responsiveness among physiotherapy students.
| S-EPMC6717323 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The marine-biodiversity assessment of New Zealand (Aotearoa as known to M?ori) is confined to the 200 nautical-mile boundary of the Exclusive Economic Zone, which, at 4.2 million km(2), is one of the largest in the world. It spans 30 degrees of latitude and includes a high diversity of seafloor relief, including a trench 10 km deep. Much of this region remains unexplored biologically, especially the 50% of the EEZ deeper than 2,000 m. Knowledge of the marine biota is based on more than 200 years of marine exploration in the region. The major oceanographic data repository is the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), which is involved in several Census of Marine Life field projects and is the location of the Southwestern Pacific Regional OBIS Node; NIWA is also data manager and custodian for fisheries research data owned by the Ministry of Fisheries. Related data sources cover alien species, environmental measures, and historical information. Museum collections in New Zealand hold more than 800,000 registered lots representing several million specimens. During the past decade, 220 taxonomic specialists (85 marine) from 18 countries have been engaged in a project to review New Zealand's entire biodiversity. The above-mentioned marine information sources, published literature, and reports were scrutinized to give the results summarized here for the first time (current to 2010), including data on endemism and invasive species. There are 17,135 living species in the EEZ. This diversity includes 4,315 known undescribed species in collections. Species diversity for the most intensively studied phylum-level taxa (Porifera, Cnidaria, Mollusca, Brachiopoda, Bryozoa, Kinorhyncha, Echinodermata, Chordata) is more or less equivalent to that in the ERMS (European Register of Marine Species) region, which is 5.5 times larger in area than the New Zealand EEZ. The implication is that, when all other New Zealand phyla are equally well studied, total marine diversity in the EEZ may be expected to equal that in the ERMS region. This equivalence invites testable hypotheses to explain it. There are 177 naturalized alien species in New Zealand coastal waters, mostly in ports and harbours. Marine-taxonomic expertise in New Zealand covers a broad number of taxa but is, proportionately, at or near its lowest level since the Second World War. Nevertheless, collections are well supported by funding and are continually added to. Threats and protection measures concerning New Zealand's marine biodiversity are commented on, along with potential and priorities for future research.
| S-EPMC2914018 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Aotearoa New Zealand Adult Kakapo Faeces Raw sequence reads
| PRJNA859416 | ENA
Project description:Identification of pyraloid species is often hampered by highly similar external morphology requiring microscopic dissection of genitalia. This becomes especially obvious when mass samples from ecological studies or insect monitoring have to be analysed. DNA barcode sequences could accelerate identification, but are not available for most pyraloid species from New Zealand. Hence, we are presenting a first DNA-barcode library for this group, providing 440 COI barcodes (cytochrome C oxidase I sequences) for 73 morphologically-identified species, which is 29% of Pyraloidea known from New Zealand. Results are analysed using the Barcode Index Number system (BIN) of BOLD and the Automatic Barcode Gap Discovery method (ABGD). Using BIN, the 440 barcodes reveal 82 clusters. A perfect match between BIN assignment and morphological identification was found for 63 species (86.3%). Four species (5.5%) share BINs, each with two species in one BIN, of which Glaucocharis epiphaea and Glaucocharis harmonica even share the same barcode. In contrast, six species (8.2%) split into two or more BINs, with the highest number of five BINs for Orocrambus ramosellus. The interspecific variation of all collected specimens of New Zealand Pyraloidea averages 12.54%. There are deep intraspecific divergences (> 2%) in seven species, for instance Orocrambus vulgaris with up to 6.6% and Scoparia ustimacula with 5.5%. Using ABGD, the 440 barcodes reveal 71 or 88 operational taxonomic units (OTUs), depending on the preferred partition. A perfect match between OTU and morphological identification was found for 56 species (76.7%) or 62 species (84.9%). ABGD delivers four or seven species sharing OTUs and four or ten species split into more than one OTU. Morphological re-examination, as well as the analysis of a concatenated dataset of COI and the nuclear markers EF1α and GADPH for species split into more than one BIN or OTU, do not support a higher number of species. Likewise, there is no evidence for Wolbachia infection as a trigger for these sequence variations.
| S-EPMC7718215 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Study objectivesTo investigate the proportion of children in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) who do or do not meet sleep duration and sleep quality guidelines at 24 and 45 months of age and associated sociodemographic factors.MethodsParticipants were children (n = 6490) from the Growing Up in New Zealand longitudinal study of child development with sleep data available at 24 and/or 45 months of age (48.2% girls, 51.8% boys; 22.4% Māori [the Indigenous people of NZ], 12.9% Pacific, 13.4% Asian, 45.2% European/Other). Relationships between sociodemographic factors and maternally reported child sleep duration (across 24 hours) and night wakings were investigated cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Estimates of children in NZ meeting sleep guidelines were calculated using a range of analytical techniques including Bayesian linear regression, negative binomial multiple regression, and growth curve models.ResultsIn NZ, 29.8% and 19.5% of children were estimated to have a high probability of not meeting sleep duration guidelines and 15.4% and 8.3% were estimated to have a high probability of not meeting night waking guidelines at 24 and 45 months respectively, after controlling for multiple sociodemographic variables. Factors associated cross-sectionally with children's sleep included ethnicity, socioeconomic deprivation, material standard of living, rurality, and heavy traffic, and longitudinal sleep trajectories differed by gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic deprivation.ConclusionsA considerable proportion of young children in NZ have a high probability of not meeting sleep guidelines but this declines across the ages of 24 and 45 months. Sleep health inequities exist as early as 24 months of age in NZ.
| S-EPMC10104380 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The design of M?ori wharenui (meeting houses), refined over the last 180 years, has given rise to a distinctive typology that demonstrates an understanding of tectonic-narrative expression. It is a visual codex designed to be read. Set within the context of pre-disaster readiness, this current study investigated the resilience of M?ori buildings and communities through a dual interpretation of seismic, regulatory and historical frameworks. The literature on M?ori building technologies scarcely addresses matters of resilience and there is currently no formalized methodology to guide wharenui seismic retrofit practice. Through a macro level analysis of recently completed retrofit projects, this current study identified issues present in current practice. The resulting research presented a pathway for the future development of an approach (to inform methodologies) and strategy (to build capability) founded on the recognition of wharenui as a new category of building within building regulations. It is also recommended that research continues to develop alternative engineered solutions, expert knowledge bases and best practice guidelines. This article is part of the theme issue 'Environmental loading of heritage structures'.
| S-EPMC6710465 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Education and literacy have long been associated with a range of economic and social outcomes in industrialized societies. Recent research based on large-scale national and international surveys has examined effects of education and literacy on individuals' social and economic outcomes. This paper takes a further step in understanding the importance of literacy for individuals' economic and social outcomes by disentangling the effects of two different aspects of literacy, literacy proficiency as measured by standardized tests and reading engagement as measured by self-reports of everyday reading activities. Using recent nationally representative survey data from New Zealand, multivariate regression models estimate the effects of reading engagement on earnings, health, social trust, political efficacy and civic engagement. Reading engagement has statistical and substantial positive effects on each of these outcomes with the effects of literacy proficiency, education and other important variables held constant. Although these results do not imply a causal relationship between reading engagement and the outcomes, they have important implications for policy and practice in adult education as well as for future research about the role of reading engagement in wellbeing more generally.
| S-EPMC10538774 | biostudies-literature