Dunedin | Ōtepoti Physiotherapist Katrina Bryant was recently named by as one of Aotearoa | New Zealand’s 100 top Māori health leaders – an honour that recognised her role in developing Taurite Tū – a nationally recognised kaupapa Māori falls-prevention and wellness programme.
Katrina wears many pōtae. She is a longstanding practitioner of MSK physiotherapy, Senior Lecturer and Associate Dean Māori at Otago University’s School of Physiotherapy, a former national level competition springboard diver, and the founder of Taurite Tū.
Asking her about the influences that drive her mahi opens a conversation that ranges back and forth across her whakapapa, the land she lives in, and her profession. It is clear that who she is and what she does are inextricably intertwined.
“I was born and raised in Ōtepoti. My whānau on mum’s side were originally Scottish and my great granddad was the first milkman for the Northeast Valley. So, on the horse and cart, and then they had a dairy farm out on the Taieri and a big, big, whānau.
“So mum was a nurse, my grandmothers were both nurses and I was always grateful for that sort of lineage of caring for people. But how I got into healthcare and physio was actually through springboard diving. I represented New Zealand on a couple of occasions and was sort of signposted that I was heading towards Olympic training and I was in Olympic training teams.
“In those days you couldn’t do that sort of thing professionally, but it really drove an interest in movement and balance and ultimate physiology. Because I also wanted to carry on our whānau legacy of healthcare, physiotherapy was the perfect fit.
“On my dad’s side I whakapapa Māori. He was an athlete too. He wanted to be a PE teacher, but he ended up being an accountant and rugby player. He was just a really caring person who was really athletic – a gymnast and a hurdler and a rugby player and all of those things and so he was ecstatic that I was choosing physiotherapy.
“When I graduated, I was the only Māori physio graduate in my year, the only one who identified as Māori at the time. There was a ceremony at the Araiteuru Marae – the first urban Marae – for all of the university’s Māori graduates and that gave me a real sense of connection.
“Even though it wasn’t my Marae, I felt really connected to it. I’d spent a lot of time when I was young there and my great aunt was involved as mana whenua and it was where I’d had some of my earliest exposure to te ao Māori.”
This interconnectedness of te ao Māori and physiotherapy is something Katrina thinks about often in her role as the school’s Associate Dean Māori.
“I welcome the students in with two pōtae, my mana whenua pōtae and um my Associate Dean Māori pōtae.
“I love being able to offer our students moving into the career the opportunities to understand the many realities of being Māori – that it’s not just about negative health outcomes that we need to address but that there are so many positive perspectives from te ao Māori that you can engage in physiotherapy.
“It’s important to me that our students, Māori and non-Māori know that you can work in physiotherapy from a te ao Māori perspective and that it’s not just okay to do as a professional but is a really important way to engage our communities. It’s mana enhancing for everyone and it leads to huge benefits in health outcomes.”
As an academic Katrina explores and encourages this approach for future physiotherapists. As a practitioner, it is fundamental to her mahi as can be seen in her development of the groundbreaking Taurite Tū programme.
Taurite Tū is a strength and balance wellness programme designed by Māori for Māori and drawing on elements of te ao Māori including performing arts, martial arts, and poi.
The programme has its origins in a conversation between Kāi Tahu tribal leader Edward Ellison and Katrina about how to engage more Māori in preventative health particularly around falls – something ACC was struggling to achieve at the time.
After two years of research and design the programme was launched at Ōtākou, Puketeraki Marae in Karitane (north of Dunedin) and at Ōtākou health clinic Te Kāika in 2021. In the years since, its success has led to it being adopted across 28 rohe in Aotearoa New Zealand.
“Māori are actually underrepresented in ACC claims not because they don’t get injured but because there is real hesitancy in engaging with the system and a concern that it’s not going to work for them. And frankly there’s also fatigue in trying to engage. For Māori and for others who haven’t had the benefit of having the system designed for them.
“I guess my thing is shifting the gaze from saying what are the barriers for Māori to access care because we know that. It’s so well researched. There’s lots and lots of evidence.
“What we have to do is shift the gaze to the question of what is the barrier to health professionals and the institutions to implementing change that is going to engage Māori.”
Despite her strong affiliation to the university and its physiotherapy school it was important for Katrina that the programme and its development belong to Māori and her involvement is very firmly as mana whenua.
“As a model for this kind of work, it was so beautiful to be able to have the research that was led out of a Māori organisation and then be able to bring in the experts from the university. It means the people who need to engage with the programme are doing so as owners of it and not just as subjects.
“I think that was one of the key reasons that Taurite Tū has been so successful. Māori ran the research for Māori and so Māori get involved because it belongs to them. That connection is critical.”
As Taurite Tū is embraced by communities it has also become a social hub for communities and created an opportunity for engagement with other parts of the health system.
“So, we have an hour of exercise and an hour of kai time where we can pull in other health professionals and other services so it’s not just of itself it’s also acting as a gateway into connecting people into wraparound services in a way that’s designed for them.”
Katrina is looking to build on the success of Taurite Tū and of the “by Māori, for Māori” model of healthcare that has driven that success. This mahi was fundamental to her being recognised by Te Rau Ora as a leader in Māori health.
“That was just amazing and it came out of the blue. I don’t know who nominated me but it was great to be acknowledged. I’m really whakama to be put into the limelight but I love that I can bring up my crew, the Taurite Tū team, into the limelight with me.
“I think that anything that uplifts our kaupapa and brings it attention is a good thing.
“I also feel very privileged because in physiotherapy we have the opportunity to work with people for a long period of time and we really get to know our patients and what their lifestyle requires to build trusting relationships and to make relevant treatment plans.
“If you open yourself up to that, which I’ve had the real privileged position to do, you can learn a lot about the human condition. That’s definitely a huge privilege and not something to be taken lightly.”