KEY POINTS:
The health and wellbeing of Maori teenagers is improving, according to research issued yesterday, but disparities with their Pakeha peers remain.
Compared with Pakeha students, Maori students were more likely to experience socioeconomic hardship, be exposed to violence, be overweight or experience emotional health problems, said Terryann Clark,
from the School of Nursing, a co-investigator on the Youth 07 project.
However, things had improved over the past six years.
Maori secondary school students were happier than those of 2001, and were less likely to drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes or use cannabis.
Dr Clark said that overall, Maori students had more health issues and were more likely to experience difficulty accessing health services when they needed them.
Youth'07 is the second national survey of the health and wellbeing
of secondary school students, conducted by the Adolescent Health Research Group at the University of Auckland.
Dr Clark said the findings highlighted areas where improvements in health should be made and would be invaluable for policymakers, families and schools.
Portrait of a generation
* In 2007 about three-quarters of students said they were happy with their family relationships.
* More students in 2007 than in 2001 reported feeling connected to school and feeling safe at school.
* Most students (81 per cent) felt safe in their neighbourhood.
* As in 2001, about one-third of students attended a place of worship weekly or more often, and 29 per cent said their spiritual beliefs were very important to them.
* Students' emotional wellbeing improved markedly since 2001. In 2007 92 per cent of students reported being okay or very happy with their lives compared with 86 per cent in 2001. Fewer students in 2007 reported significant depressive symptoms (12.4 per cent in 2001 down to 10.6 per cent in 2007) and fewer students had attempted suicide in the past 12 months (7.8 per cent in 2001 down to 4.7 per cent in 2007).
* As in 2001, about a third of students said they had never had sexual intercourse.
* Students' cigarette and marijuana use had declined. Only 8 per cent of students reported smoking cigarettes weekly or more often in 2007, compared with 16 per cent in 2001. The number of students who had used marijuana had also decreased from 39 per cent in 2001 to 27 per cent in 2007.
* Some nutrition and physical activity behaviours improved between 2001 and 2007. More students reported that they always ate breakfast - an increase from 51 per cent in 2001 to 58 per cent in 2007.
* Ten to 20 per cent of students lived in families facing significant adversity, including food insecurity, due to economic hardship, and were unable to access health or dental care when they needed it.
* The numbers of students who binge drink remained high - 34 per cent reported binge drinking at least once in the past four weeks.
* One in five students reported being sent nasty or threatening messages by cellphone or internet; 13 per cent had been sent unwanted sexual material.
* Fort-one per cent of students said they had been hit or physically harmed in the past 12 months. Of those, , about a quarter said the severity of the violence was pretty bad, really bad or terrible.
