Dr Teuila Percival, Consultant Paediatrician, KidzFirst Children's Hospital & Karanina Sumeo, Principal Pacific Advisor, Child, Youth and Family
ADDRESS: Vaaifetu – guardianship of stars – our children, families and practitioners. Pacific practices of vaaifetu in health and statutory social work
Dr Teuila Percival is a Consultant Paediatrician working at KidzFirst Children’s Hospital. She is also a Senior Lecturer and Director of Pacific Health at the School of Population Health, University of Auckland.
Dr Percival has particular interests in child health, child abuse and neglect, Pacific people’s health and inequalities. Her clinical work includes general paediatrics and child protection. Dr Percival’s research projects include Pacific child obesity treatment, traditional Pacific pathways to sexual violence prevention, Pacific children with disabilities and the development of digital storytelling to promote health in the Pacific.
In addition to Clinical and University work, she has worked in the community for over a decade and is currently Chairman of South Seas Healthcare Trust and a trustee of Alliance Health Plus. She set up South Seas Kids, the first comprehensive Pacific Well Child service in New Zealand and Kids-In Action, one of the first community based child obesity programmes in Auckland. She is Director or TAHA, the Pacific Well Mother and Infant Service.
Dr Percival also works extensively in the Pacific region. She led the Pacific Child Health Indicator Project which focused on measuring progress in maternal and child health in the Pacific Islands. She has also undertaken project work in Climate Change and Health in Tuvalu, Tonga, Samoa and Niue.
Dr Percival is Samoan, a mother of three and grandmother of one. She is married to John McEnteer, of Ngati Maru Hauraki.
Karanina Sumeo is the Principal Pacific Advisor to Child Youth and Family at the Ministry of Social Development (New Zealand). She has a public sector background in education, health and children protection, in policy, contract management and as a social work practitioner.
She has been a research consultant on projects in the Pacific on human rights and the impact of the global financial crisis.
Karanina has also sat on boards for the Auckland Restorative Justice Trust and the Fountain of Knowledge Trust in relation to services in restorative justice
and early childhood education. Karanina is a present board member of the SAFE Network Inc which works with sexual offenders in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Karanina is the proud mother of two daughters and a son of Samoan, Irish and New Zealand descent.
