Refugees arriving in New Zealand can have complex health needs. A suite of refugee pathways developed by the New Zealand HealthPathways team, Health New Zealand, and the Ministry for Business and Innovation is helping refugees receive the specialised care they need, no matter where they settle in the country.  

Refugee pathways help GPs provide specialised care

New Zealand is one of around 37 countries that take part in the UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency) regular refugee resettlement programme. In 2020, New Zealand’s annual refugee quota was increased from 1000 to 1500.

All refugees arriving through the quota programme arrive in Auckland and spend at least five weeks at Te Āhuru Mōwai o Aotearoa, Immigration New Zealand’s Refugee Resettlement Centre. During their orientation, a Refugee Health Screening Service identifies and treats any personal health conditions before the refugees are settled in one of 13 locations around New Zealand. From this point, the expectation is that community GPs will provide ongoing health checks for them.

Dr Karen Chung, a clinical editor and GP at the Māngere Refugee Resettlement Centre, saw the need to create a support package and nationally consistent pathways that would help guide GPs through the particular health needs for refugees.   

Dr Justine Lancaster, regional group clinical advisor and clinical lead for the Health New Zealand national pathways programme, facilitated this to become a nationally supported HealthPathways project.  

“Often, refugees come with a background of complex health issues - many problems will have been untreated or unaddressed, once they arrive, there are significant challenges navigating a new culture and a new complex health system while facing language barriers”, she says.

How HealthPathways supported health professionals

The refugee pathways support local GPs by reflecting agreed best practice for refugee health. They are published with local variation to express specific information on services and include local details such as where to get tests done, locally available funding, and any support beyond the health system, such as refugee or local community support.  

“What that means for clinicians who use the pathways is that there is a standardised process for caring for the health of people who’ve arrived as refugees to support them over the first year or so, as well as key information about specific testing, screening, and needs they may have, with links to locally available resources and services,” Dr Lancaster says.  

“We’re quite excited about the support this provides for stretched primary care providers, especially in rural areas where it can be hard to attract GPs and practices may be staffed by a string of locums who may lack local system knowledge.”  

Behind the scenes

Meet key team members who facilitated the refugee pathways.

Meet Justine

Kia ora, I'm Dr Justine Lancaster, a specialist General Practitioner working for HealthPathways across New Zealand. I work as both the Streamliners Regional Group (and New Zealand) Clinical Advisor, and the Health New Zealand, Care Pathways Clinical Lead for national community HealthPathways. I guide, train, and support the clinicians who work alongside Streamliners HealthPathways writers to develop care pathways. I also support HealthPathways programme teams across New Zealand.

I was excited to be part of this project which will support more equitable access to healthcare for refugees settling in New Zealand. As GPs from around New Zealand can now access these care pathways and resources, refugees will now benefit from this care no matter where they live. It feels good to know that in a small way, my work will help people from another culture feel cared for and supported as they make Aotearoa their home.

‍Meet Antoinette

Hi, I’m Antoinette Ehmke, Pathway Sharing Manager. I get satisfaction from helping to create a system that enables care pathways such as these to be shared, knowing that this reduces duplication of effort and improves the speed at which information can updated and shared across a whole country. 

My role in the project was to facilitate the collaboration between several HealthPathways teams involved with bringing this project together. I supported them to develop the suite of pathways and share them across HealthPathways sites so that GPs anywhere in the country could access them. As an immigrant to New Zealand myself, I know how hard it can be to resettle in a new country and I’m proud that I could play a part to help make the transition easier for refugees joining our communities.