The Asian Health Hub at Comprehensive Care
- Mahdiyeh Moore
- Nov 21
- 2 min read
Advancing Equity Through Culturally Integrated Care
Auckland is now one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world — and the Asian population is its fastest-growing community, projected to make up nearly half of Auckland’s residents by 2043. Within our PHO network, many practices now serve large numbers of Asian patients — international students, working professionals, new migrants, and multi-generational families.
While this growth brings cultural diversity, it also exposes significant equity gaps. Many Asian communities face barriers that prevent them from fully accessing or benefiting from New Zealand’s healthcare system. These include:
Language and communication challenges, particularly for new migrants and older adults.
Limited understanding of the NZ health system, including GP enrolment and referral pathways.
Cultural stigma around mental health or help-seeking.
Social isolation, especially among seniors and international students.
Practical barriers such as transport, cost, or limited culturally relevant information.
These barriers can lead to delayed presentations, underutilisation of preventive care, and poorer long-term outcomes — all of which run counter to Aotearoa’s national commitment to health equity.
That’s why Comprehensive Care PHO established the Asian Health Hub: to ensure that every person, regardless of culture or language, can access high-quality, culturally safe, and integrated care.
Our Asian Health Hub was created to respond to that need. Embedded within the PHO, it connects primary-care teams, mental-health providers, and community organisations to deliver culturally safe, language-appropriate, and holistic health support. The Hub reflects our values — Waka Hourua (Together), Maunga (We Stand), and Ngahere (We Grow) — guiding how we partner with communities and our practices alike.
The Asian Health Hub operates across five key pillars
Practice Support
We help general practices better serve Asian populations through cultural consultation, multilingual resources, long-term-conditions, mental health, smokefree, and dietetic care.
Equity-Focused Services
Our team delivers free youth and adult counselling (in Mandarin, Cantonese and English), parenting and wellbeing programmes, international-student workshops, and senior-health initiatives — ensuring that cultural context is always part of clinical care.
Community Partnerships
We work closely with the CNSST Foundation, one of Auckland’s largest Asian NGOs, to run nurse-led clinical services for postnatal women and seniors, community immunisation events, alcohol-harm-prevention forums, and settlement activities such as walking groups, coffee/teatime, and volunteering opportunities. These partnerships directly reduce social isolation and improve engagement with GP practices.
Workforce Development
Building a culturally responsive workforce is central to our mission. We provide training for practice teams, create networking and mentoring spaces for Asian clinicians, and collaborate with tertiary institutions such as Massey University and Auckland University of Technology (AUT) on education and research initiatives.
Asian-Focused GP Support
We foster a collegial network among Asian-led practices, sharing innovation, bilingual communication tools, and integrated-care models that align with Health New Zealand's equity goals.
Looking Ahead
Our next phase will expand nurse-led clinics and wellbeing groups through CNSST, introduce dietitian consultations to the community, and extend culturally tailored EAP and mental-health services across schools and workplaces.
At its heart, the Asian Health Hub is about people. Connecting health, culture, and community.
Because culturally embedded care isn’t just good practice — it’s an equity intervention.
