MANALAGI
Aotearoa Pacific Rainbow LGBTQIA+ MVPFAFF+ Health and Wellbeing Project

Enhancing the mana of Pacific Peoples through research

The Manalagi: Aotearoa Pacific Rainbow Health and Wellbeing Project is funded by the Health Research Council of New Zealand, hosted at the University of Auckland and in collaboration with F'INE Pasifika Aotearoa. It aims to create a safe cultural research space for Pacific Rainbow+ communities to communicate their unique health and wellbeing needs.

As both Pacific and Rainbow individuals face stigma as a barrier to their health and wellbeing in New Zealand, the Manalagi Project takes the ethos of co-community driven, embedded and owned, to empower Pacific Rainbow communities to help co-design health policy and services through research.

The project will document self-reported health information for those who self-identify as part of the Pacific Rainbow community through a three-year period. This consists of extensive community consultation; delivery of a Pacific Rainbow Health Survey aimed at collecting 500-1000 respondents, and a culturally-appropriate collection and documentation of 50-60 Pacific Rainbow individual narratives detailing their experiences with health service delivery through the blending of talanoa, Pacific concepts of space like the vā, and relationality with qualitative interviews.

PROJECT TIMELINE

PHASE 1 - Community Consultations

APRIL - MAY 2021

In Phase One of the Manalagi Project, the research team travelled both motu to speak to members of our communities around what information needs to be collected.A draft survey instrument based on previous research was taken to the community for feedback and further co design.

PHASE 2 - Manalagi Survey

FEBRUARY - AUGUST 2022

In Phase Two of the project and following Ethics approval and the survey testing period in Oct-Dec 2021, the sharpened and co-community designed Manalagi Survey went live.Open to members, allies and friends of Pacific Rainbow+ communities in Aotearoa, the Manalagi Survey went live during Auckland Pride Month 2022. The Manalagi Survey was open from Monday 21 February and closed on Wednesday 31 August 2022.With an initial goal of 500-1000 respondents, 756 people took the Manalagi Survey.

PHASE 3 - Individual Talanoa

JANUARY - OCTOBER 2023

In the third and final phase of the Manalagi Project, members of the research team collected and shared narratives of our community members through talanoa. The purpose of this phase was to supplement the quantitative data of the Manalagi Survey, with the nuance of qualitative knowledge.60 talanoa were held, both in person and via Zoom.