Dr Joanna Hikaka: putting community at the centre of Māori health research
14 November 2023
For Dr Joanna Hikaka, good health research isn't just about findings. It's about who gets to be part of the process.
A pharmacist and health researcher of Ngāruahine descent, Dr Hikaka is based in Tāmaki Makaurau, where she works as a Senior Lecturer at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland. Her work sits at the intersection of Kaupapa Māori methodology, health equity, and gerontology, with a particular focus on how health systems can be redesigned to better serve older Māori.
Dr Hikaka is passionate about applying her research in the real world to help people and communities. That philosophy shapes everything from how she designs studies to who she brings into the research process. She prioritises community voices, especially those of Māori and older people, and collaborates widely with partners inside and outside the university.
Her PhD, completed in 2021, examined how to apply the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi to create equitable health services. The conclusions outline a step-by-step approach to pro-equity health intervention development. That framework has since informed her ongoing research programmes, including work on injury prevention and recovery, medicines access, and residential aged care pathways for Māori.
Dr Hikaka is a co-director of the Centre for Co-Created Ageing Research (CoCreate Age) and is leading the multi-phase development of Māori-centred models for kaumātua care. Her research has been used to develop educational resources for health professionals, and by funders and policymakers to help them make better decisions about which health services to fund and how to measure whether those services are succeeding.
Her drive to make research accessible extends beyond publications. She received the Fulbright Science and Innovation Graduate Award in 2021, a prestigious award valued at up to US$40,000, which supported her to study at Brown University, where she researched the development of pro-equity healthcare interventions for older adults.
Recognition of her contributions has continued to grow. In 2023, she received a University of Auckland Early Career Research Excellence award, and in 2021 she received the University of Auckland Prize for Best Doctoral Thesis alongside the Contribution to Māori Health and Best Emerging Researcher awards at the Waitematā DHB Health Excellence Awards.
Now, Dr Hikaka is focused on expanding who gets to be a researcher. She is using a recent award to support the creation of resources aimed at helping kaumātua and other community members to be actively involved in undertaking Kaupapa Māori research in ways that suit them and help them deliver on community aspirations.
"Our kaumātua deserve to be able to access ACC when they suffer injuries, but instead they often found the system impenetrable," she says, reflecting on findings from a recent study she led on older Māori experiences of injury care. "Our health system needs to be equipped to help tangata whenua, rather than adding to their distress."
It is a thread that runs through all her work: a conviction that equity is not just a research topic. It is something that has to be built into how research itself is done.