Pasifika Festival: The nurse from Niue

Dahlia with Helen Clark at one of PIHC's health centre. Photo / Supplied

Dahlia Naepi tells Greg Fleming of the struggle behind the success story and how times have changed for Pasifika people.

Dahlia Naepi never set out to be a role model to Pasifika women but that is what she's become.

Judged Pacific Blue's 2007 businesswoman of the year, and celebrated by prime ministers and community leaders, she is now looking to expand her award-winning Pacific health centres off-shore, back to the islands where she was born and that still inspire her today. As with most bold new initiatives it wasn't always an easy journey. Dahlia arrived from Niue in 1978 and settled in a very different Auckland than the proudly multi-cultural city of today. "I came here with nothing and started life in struggle.

Luckily I was already a trained nurse but things were very hard and Pacific people were stigmatised. It was difficult to earn a decent wage at that time and there was a lot of subtle and not so subtle discrimination in the workforce."

Dahlia had always been passionate about advancing Pacific people's health services and soon identified a gap in the market - many Pasifika people were hesitant about accessing the very healthcare they often desperately needed. She established the first centre on the North Shore (there is a now second centre in Onehunga).

"I had to overcome doubters. Everyone I talked to was very negative, people said there were only pockets of Pacific people on the Shore and that the idea was doomed to fail, but deep down I felt it was right," she says. "One day I came home to the family and said - "I'm going to sell the house and set up the company" - which we did."

Dahlia remembers the first nine months of PIHC as some of the toughest times of her life - her family were living in rental accommodation and for the first nine months of the operation she had no government health contracts - usually the lifeblood of any health-care provider.

Sometimes, she admits, she felt like closing up shop and going home, but her determination and a little luck kept herhead above water.

"Through that time the person that held us together was the landlord of the centre. He allowed me to rent the property free of charge for nine months."

Nine years on PIHC's centres provide quality care to hundreds of patients, and while it specialises in caring for Pacific people, all ethnicities are welcome.