Creating Change
Nga Kaupapa Auaha
The Healthy Families NZ approach focuses on addressing the underlying conditions that impact our health and wellbeing, in order to reduce the risk of preventable chronic disease. All of the Healthy Families NZ localities are connected through this common approach and principals, which creates our prevention movement.
Our whole-of-community approach enables initiatives to be driven by local leadership and changemakers. By taking a whole of community approach helps identify the systems and the social and physical environments at play, rather than looking at individual choices and behaviours.
We are only as healthy as our least healthy environment.
A systems approach recognises that the relationships and connections within a system are key, and that by looking at a system as a whole we can find effective ways to challenge the status quo and use the relationships and connections to disrupt the system to get a desired outcome.
It also recognises that no one individual, organisation or sector can do this alone, so working deliberately and collectively is essential to creating change. This disruption creates opportunities to adapt the system to better serve our people.
We also have an explicit focus on improving equity and health and wellbeing outcomes for Māori utilising a te ao Māori lens alongside partnerships with Māori leaders and communities to prioritise opportunities to create meaningful impact.
Six Conditions of Systems Change
Healthy Families NZ enables community-led change through the Six Conditions of Systems Change.
These six interdependent conditions are what hold problems in place, and also what enable a problem to be resolved through systemic disruption. Some Conditions are explicit and obvious, and some are more implicit and harder to see. Each provides a focus area that can inform the development of change strategies and system interventions.
The Systems Change Approach Explained
Systems change is an approach that recognises how complex the world really is, and focuses on shifting the whole picture rather than merely tinkering with little parts.
Healthy Families NZ uses systems thinking to be more centred on whānau aspirations and lived experiences. To make systems change easier to understand, Healthy Families South Auckland have broken it down for us in a simple video.
