Health policy

Abstract

Improving health and well-being and promoting equity in outcomes are long-standing goals of New Zealand governments (for example, Department of Health, 1989; King, 2000; Ryall, 2007; Ministry of Health, 2016a, 2016b).1 New Zealand’s publicly funded health system delivers millions of high-quality services each year to achieve these goals. Our level of expenditure per capita on health care is slightly below the OECD average, but our health care system provides good overall health outcomes for the money we spend (OECD, 2015). Both our life expectancy and health expectancy (the years we live in good health) are increasing, although the former is increasing faster than the latter, leading to an increase in the number of years New Zealanders spend in poorer health; a key challenge is to improve our quality of life as people age (Ministry of Health, 2017a). Sadly, however, there are significant inequities in health, with Mäori, Pasifika and lower-income people having poorer health than other New Zealanders.