Kia Ora Hauora is a government-funded workforce development program in Aotearoa/New Zealand that aims to support and provide opportunities for Māori to explore pathways into the health workforce (Ministry of Health 2006). In November 2012, Kia Ora Hauora and consultants developed the Kia Ora Hauora Junior Roadshow to travel to high schools promoting awareness around subject choice and encouraging young Māori (12–14 years old) to get interested in and excited about health careers. In the first three years of the Roadshow there were more than 60 interactive sessions and over 5000 secondary students involved. The Roadshows were based on a one-hour lesson plan and involved one team leader and two or three ‘Roadshow facilitators’ per school.
As part of the Kia Ora Hauora vision, Indigenous tertiary health students were recruited to be Roadshow facilitators. As facilitators, they were primarily responsible for running small group workshops that involved interacting with the secondary students and teaching health-related information and health-specific skills such as undertaking CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) on a manikin, eliciting tendon re exes and using a stethoscope. Facilitators were recruited from within the regions in which the Roadshow was hosted. They were given a one-day training session before the program began and were financially reimbursed for their time. Twenty-two Roadshow facilitators were involved over the first three years of the program.
The purpose of this research is to investigate the impacts on the Indigenous tertiary health students who were employed as Roadshow facilitators from 2012 to 2014.
