Congratulations to the OL@-OR@ team for their latest publication on the New Zealand Medical Journal.

The article that you can read in full here, gives a detailed overview and analysis of the OL@-OR@ project.

About OL@-OR@

Aim

The primary objective of this study was to determine the effect of a mobile health (mHealth) intervention on the wellbeing of Pasifika peoples, and to explore factors associated with Pasifika wellbeing.

Method

The OL@-OR@ mHealth programme was a co-designed smartphone app. Culturally relevant data was collected to examine holistic health and wellbeing status, at baseline, and at 12 weeks (end of the trial). The concept of wellbeing was examined as part of a two-arm, cluster randomised trial, using only the Pasifika data: 389 (of 726) Pasifika adults were randomised to receive the mHealth intervention, while 405 (of 725) Pasifika adults were randomised to receive a control version of the intervention. Culturally relevant data was collected to examine holistic health and wellbeing status, at baseline, and at 12 weeks (end of the trial). The intervention effects and the association of demographic and behavioural relationships with wellbeing, was examined using logistic regression analyses.

Results

Relative to baseline, there were significant differences between the intervention and control groups for the ‘family/community’ wellbeing, at the end of the 12-week trial. There were no significant differences observed for all other wellbeing domains for both groups. Based on our multivariate regression analyses, education and acculturation (assimilation and marginalisation) were identified as positively strong factors associated to Pasifika ‘family and community’ wellbeing.

Conclusion

Our study provides new insights on how Pasifika peoples’ characteristics and behaviours align to wellbeing. Our findings point to ‘family and community’ as being the most important wellbeing factor for Pasifika peoples.