Elizabeth was invited to speak alongside Dr Heather Muriwai (Tangahoe, Ngāti Ruanui) at the Paediatric Society NZ Annual Meeting 2025 held in Manuakau, Auckland. We presented as part of the Child Protection Clinical Network SIG before the actual meeting started, but had an engaged group of clinicians in attendance.
Dr Muriwai is an inspiring wahine who enjoyed collaborating with for our session 'Te Ao Māori Birth & Parenting'. Her background is as a Māori midwife but more recently, she was appointed to the inaugural role of Chief Clinical Officer Maternity at Manatū Hauora in March 2024. This role includes engaging with the Health Ministers alongside entities who have the responsibility for the delivery of safe and effective health services.
Her goal is to ensure Manatū Hauora has a strong focus on quality and safety as it strengthens system stewardship in the maternity area. This mahi intersects with her own on-going commitment to both improving the outcomes for our birthing whānau, and growing and supporting Māori midwifery leadership across Aotearoa.
Her kōrero spoke into this space, and the decades of inequity in the midwifery space, which has progressively improved, but she still highlighted how much more work there was to do this in space. She also shared lived experiences from her own daughter's childbirth journey to illustrate birthing with a te ao Māori frame.
Alongside her, my own korero introduced tūpuna parenting, shared a range of mātauranga and how it could inspire and empower whānau, and ways that we are bringing this mātauranga to life for whānau across the motu.
Acknowledgements
Ngā mihi nui to Russell Mills for connecting Dr Muriwai and myself for this important kōrero to this clinical audience.
