A joint research project lead by Maori nurses to help Maori nurse smokers quit has won nearly $600,000 in funding from the Health Research Council.
The researchers will be working with Maori nurses who smoke to find out about their quitting experiences and help design quit interventions that work.
The two year qualitative study is a joint venture between Te Runanga o Aotearoa NZNO, Whanganui-based Whakauae Research for Maori Health and Development and the Auckland University of Technology (AUT).
Project leaders are Maori nurse researchers Dr Heather Gifford of Whakauae Research and Associate Professor Denise Wilson of AUT who will work with NZNO researcher Dr Leonie Walker.
Gifford said it was estimated that up to 30 per cent of Maori nurse are smokers but the research was to include a survey to clarify what the current smoking prevalence was amongst Maori nurses.
Kerri Nuku, NZNO’s kaiwhakahaere welcomed the project and said it had been known for some time that Maori nurse smoking rates were much higher than they should be. She said as nurses are role models developing ways to help Maori nurses quit could have much wider health benefits than just for the nurses themselves.
“It is hoped Maori nurses, in particular, can play a role in dramatically improving quit rates amongst Maori, who bear the greatest burden of ill health and death caused by smoking."
She said rather than punishing Maori nurses who smoke the research could find positive ways to undo the “terrible damage caused by the tobacco industry over past decades”.
Phase one of the research was to include collecting data, the second phase was working with Maori nurses across the country and across a range of health sectors to help design an intervention and the final phase was to develop a kaupapa Maori smoking cessation intervention for Maori nurses.
Gifford said they wanted to find out from the nurses the particular challenges they face quitting as health professionals and what workplace policy or support would help them. She said the research would bring nurse smokers together in a supportive environment to talk about their own quitting journeys including what didn’t work and what they believed would work.
Gifford said if New Zealand was to reach its Smokefree 2025 goal then the prevalence of smoking needed to half by 2015.
