Background: Rheumatic fever (RF) and its sequela rheumatic heart disease (RHD) occur at unusually high levels in New Zealand. A disease of social deprivation, RF now almost exclusively affects Māori and Pacific peoples. In 2011, the Government announced a goal to reduce the incidence of RF by two-thirds to 1.4 per 100,000 and make RF...

Small Island Developing States have narrow resource bases and are extremely reliant on fossil fuel based energy for electricity generation. These island economies are also particularly vulnerable to the impacts of peak oil and climate change.

Background: Genital Chlamydia trachomatis infections are the most common bacterial sexually transmitted diseases in the world and place a huge burden on healthcare resources. Knowledge on the epidemiology of Chlamydia trachomatis infections and reproductive health of women in Samoa and the Pacific in general is very limited. The current knowledge is limited to a small...

This thesis examines methodological issues in the analysis of fishbone assemblages from the Pacific. A review of the literature on Pacific fishing raises questions about methodology in Pacific fishbone analysis. Recent work in Pacific fishbone analysis at the Otago Archaeology Laboratory and other international laboratories has shown that different identification and quantification methods have significant...

Obesity discourses are shaping us. Amidst an avowed obesity 'epidemic', we are all considered at-risk, hailed to understand ourselves as such, and persuaded that we have the capability to author our bodies in a desired/required slender form. Attention has shifted from 'fat' adult bodies that have thwarted reform, to the bodies of 'innocent' babes, drawing...