AI chatbots launched to help rangatahi Māori with quitting smoking

5 days ago 43

TUA chatbots designed to assistance Māori rangatahi discontinue smoking.

New exertion has been launched to assistance young people, peculiarly Māori, quit smoking.

Read this communicative successful te reo Māori and English here. / Pānuitia tēnei one te reo Māori maine te reo Pākehā ki konei.

TUA - Hine and Tāne (young antheral and female) are AI chatbots developed by Te Whatu Ora, societal justness corporate Takiri Mai Te Ata and westbound Auckland nationalist wellness advocacy radical Hāpai Te Hauora.

TUA is disposable 24/7 connected Facebook Messenger and is disposable successful English oregon te reo Māori.

The chat-bot tin nonstop regular check-ins, tips and distractions to assistance enactment rangatahi done the archetypal 30 days of quitting smoking.

The TUA website besides offers mātauranga Māori resources to assistance whānau link to themselves and te taiao (the earthy environment).

This includes cognition of maramataka (the Māori lunar cycle), pūrākau (Māori stories and legends), and karakia, successful an effort to empower rangatahi passim their quitting journey.

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Where does this assertion travel from, and does it stack up? (First published June 2022)

Hāpai Te Hauora spokesperson Danielle Griffioen said TUA was important arsenic it gives whānau crossed Aotearoa entree to hauora services done the internet.

Hauora is simply a Māori doctrine of wellness and well-being.

“The breathtaking happening astir [TUA] is it was developed with a te ao Māori model and with mātauranga Māori astatine the forefront to truly link with our whānau,” she said.

“Unfortunately, not everyone passim Aotearoa has entree to hauora oregon smoking cessation services.”

Griffioen said the Covid pandemic had proven the occurrence of online wellness and enactment services for Māori communities.

The TUA website besides offers mātauranga Māori to assistance whānau link to themselves and te taiao (the earthy environment).

TUA besides offered an accidental for some Māori and non-Māori to larn however te ao Māori tin enactment time to time life, portion quitting smoking.

“Mātauranga Māori...and connecting with te taiao are truly important taonga from our tūpuna [ancestors] to assistance america navigate done the highs and lows of quitting smoking oregon of immoderate travel that we whitethorn beryllium facing,” Griffioen said.

"This exertion offers a modern solution to enactment those who privation to halt smoking and amended their wellbeing,” Kathrine Clarke, Director of Health Promotion astatine Te Whatu Ora, said.

“Rangatahi tin entree contiguous enactment connected their presumption and link to different smoking enactment services done the chatbot."

While the run is designed to assistance discontinue smoking, it is designed wrong te ao Māori frameworks and ways of knowing wellbeing.

That means it’s applicable to, and tin besides assistance whānau with antithetic whāinga [goals], which could besides see vaping.

In November 2021, probe from The Asthma and Respiratory Foundation New Zealand (ARFNZ) recovered one-in-five teens utilized an e-cigarette daily, portion a February 2022 survey by Action for Smokefree (ASH) estimated that 250,000 Kiwis vape.

According to the Ministry of Health, successful 2021/22, 19.9% of Māori successful Aotearoa were smokers, compared to 7.2% of non-Māori, excluding Pasifika.

"We look backmost to our ancestors and spot their crisp intellect successful creating caller technologies,” Hāpai Te Hauora CEO Jason Alexander said.

“While smoking isn’t from present oregon belongs to us, we person the tools and creativity to find innovative solutions to beryllium well. TUA is an illustration of that."

TUA tin beryllium recovered here.