WOMEN OF THE ISLANDS: Fepulea'i Margie Apa
Fepulea'i Margie Apa
CEO for Interim Health New Zealand
Samoan
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Counties Manukau District Health Board's Fepulea'i Margie Apa has just been named the chief executive of the interim Health New Zealand.
Health New Zealand and the Māori Health Authority will become permanent entities on 1 July - replacing the 20 district health boards.
Fepulea'i Margie Apa said her work with the Counties Manukau community has prepared her well for the role.
"Working with you [Counties Manukau] over the last 14 years and more proudly the last three as CEO, through measles, through Whakaari, through Covid on top of our usual pressures serving a high needs community, who are deserving and entitled to so much more," she said.
She has about 25 years experience in the health sector and is expected to start her new role in the first quarter of 2022.
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We caught up with Fepulea'i Margie Apa when she was appointed CEO for Counties Manukau DHB - the first Samoan to become a CEO of a district health board in NZ. Her interview with us below ...
Can you tell us what this job entails for you and how you want to impact the health of Pacific people in particular?
My role is chief executive officer for the Counties Manukau DHB. What that means is that I am accountable and report to a board that is appointed by the Minister of Health. We receive funding from central government, about 1.7 billion dollars to provide health care services, and our purpose as a District Health Board is to protect, promote and support health care for people who are resident in the Counties Manukau District (so that’s largely South Auckland).
As part of my job, I’m responsible for a DHB that employs just over seven thousand people who deliver health care across twenty sites in South Auckland. We also fund services like general practice, community based mental health providers and various organizations; so we are a funder and provider of health care services.
We have concerns around certain aspects of the health of Pacific people that aren’t improving fast enough. Pacific people seem to bear a greater disease burden of conditions like diabetes, heart disease and some cancers we get earlier than other people.
Often one of the many reasons that we might seem to have a higher burden of those diseases is that we’ve got a higher number of people who are obese, in particular morbidly obese. We are about 1/3 of the smokers in the district, and we seem to have a higher use of unhealthy habits around alcohol. So all those factors mean that we need to be quite thoughtful and look for different ways of supporting Pacific people.
Why is it relevant that a Pacific person is the CEO of the Counties Manukau DHB?
The counties population is probably one of the most ethnically diverse in New Zealand. We have a population of just under 550,000. Around 25% are Asian, 23% are Pacific and 16% are Māori. So essentially 2/3 of our population are not NZ European or other. I suppose one of the key pieces of feedback I get is that even though I have a lot of health experience, and I come with a track record of delivering improved healthcare in both national organizations and the district health boards, being a Pacific person on top of that adds a particular perspective.
Because I’ve been an ethnically diverse person working in largely non-ethnically diverse work forces, I have a particular insight that I bring about how we create and get the best out of a diverse population.
How does being Samoan impact your life and work?
The biggest impact is having the values of what is important to Samoans. It really imbues and is a lens that I see lots of things through. One of the most important pieces of advice my father gave me when I first went to Wellington, was always remember that I might be the first Samoan that anybody’s ever met, so what kind of impression do I want to leave? Basically what he was saying was be respectful, be kind, gracious and generous, and I think that’s something that really underpinned that way I work professionally.
The work we do can be really tough and it’s tense because the stakes are high. If we don’t make good decisions, people’s health are affected, and so coming at it from a place of respect and being kind and generous to what other people bring to the table is a very Samoan thing to do, we are very inclusive people. But we’re also not afraid to say what we think, and I think it’s important in environments like this to be true to yourself and if you don’t think things are right, to say so; it’s important to our people that we speak up.
I was raised in South Auckland. I grew up in Clover Park and went to school at Papatoetoe High School. When I was at Auckland University I got a scholarship from the State Services Commission that helped not just fund my studies, but I ended up working in Wellington a lot. So going from South Auckland to Wellington in the mid to late 90’s was quite exciting for a young brown girl who had never left Auckland much.
I think being exposed to the working environment in Wellington and having worked with ministers and in government agencies, being exposed to that kind of policy and change has been a really good experience. I’ve worked in both policy, organizations that do a lot of thinking and writing and giving advice, but I’ve also working in district health boards and the providers who actually deliver services so I can see how things translate into practice, and that’s helped.
I try to walk along side my front line colleagues who deliver services and I always find it inspiring to hear patients or consumers of our services give us feedback. I remember one example of a young woman who was part of a new program that we trialed on reducing smoking, and it wasn’t the incentives that were motivating her, it was actually the fact that her life was changing.
She could really talk about how much healthier she felt when she stopped smoking, how much more money she had in her pocket, she could buy stuff for her kids, and that kind of transforming affect on people that good healthcare services can make is quite inspiring. Most people want to do the best for their family and their children, and if we can provide the right kind of healthcare at the right time that helps them do that, it inspires me and gets me coming to work everyday.