Media release

From: New Zealand Medical Association (NZMA)

Key Points

·         Pacific people had poorer clinical outcomes at discharge from New Zealand chronic pain services compared to European people.

·         At 3–6 month follow-up, Māori scored poorer on almost all clinical outcomes compared to European people, while Asian and Pacific people had a number of poorer clinical outcomes compared to European.

·         Māori, Asian and Pacific people had poorer scores than European people at baseline for a number of clinical measures, indicating a greater impact of pain and a greater need for healthcare at treatment start.

·         The clearest discrepancies in clinical outcomes were in mental health and pain beliefs, rather than pain and physical function.

Summary

We looked at clinical outcome measures (pain, physical function, mental health) from a database of people who had attended a New Zealand chronic-pain service. These outcomes were compared between ethnicities (Māori, Pacific people, Asian, European) at baseline, treatment end and at 3–6-month follow-up. At baseline, scores in the outcome measures were consistently worse in the non-European ethnicities. At treatment end, Pacific people had poorer scores compared to European for several measures of mental health. At 3–6-month follow-up almost all outcome measures were poorer for Māori compared to European, and several of the mental health measures were poorer for Asian and Pacific people. These findings indicate ethnic inequalities in treatment efficacy of New Zealand chronic pain services and indicate a review of cultural safety of the services is required.