Fulbright scholar to carry out “urgent” diabetes prevention research in US

Professor Firestone is a widely respected Pacific Health researcher at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University’s Centre for Public Health Research in Wellington. Since 2015 she has led teams across Aotearoa New Zealand to co-design and deliver community-led health prevention programmes, empowering Pacific and Māori youth and communities to drive positive health outcomes.

In 2025, Professor Firestone’s team published a research finding that 35 per cent of a sample of 276 Wellington school children aged 11-13 were at moderate-to-high risk of prediabetes.

“Having prediabetes doesn’t mean a young person will definitely develop type 2 diabetes but it signals a higher likelihood of progression if nothing changes,” Professor Firestone says.

“It’s clear there is an urgent need for a youth-focused type 2 diabetes prevention programme in Aotearoa New Zealand.”

In September, Professor Firestone will travel to the Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA to work alongside her long-term collaborators, Pacific epidemiologist Dr Rebecca Delafield,and community-based researcher Dr Nia Aitaoto. She will also be partnering with two large Pacific agencies in the Los Angeles area - the Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organisations (AAPCHO) and the Centre for Disease Control funded Pacific Islander Center of Primary Care Excellence (PI-CoPCE).

Professor Firestone says being based at UCLA for a semester also provides her with unique access to large and diverse Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander populations.

Professor Firestone takes a co-design approach to her health research, where rather than academics and professionals instructing communities on the best steps to take for their health, they partner with them to co-create culturally-grounded solutions.

“Education alone, telling people what to do, isn’t enough. Listening to communities, what their needs are, what’s culturally relevant. They must be involved in the research as partners if we want transformative change to enable communities to live healthy lives.”

She says although it will take longer to co-design a youth-focused type 2 diabetes prevention programme than a simple public education campaign, if successful it will be more sustainable and effective because Pacific communities in both countries are likely to take ownership of the programme and evolve with it over time.

“It is based on developing relationships with communities, understanding the social-cultural realities that people live in, and co-designing a health promotion or prevention programme that is tailored for Pacific communities, according to the availability of regional resources, social capital and support networks.”