Cutting Edge 2025: Growing a stronger Pasifika addiction workforce together

For Toleafoa Mark Esekielu, Le Va’s senior manager for mental health and addiction, this year’s Cutting Edge addiction workforce hui stirred up a lot of reflection.

“Conferences have always brought value for me – not just the sessions, but reconnecting with peers, the chance to pause, reflect and reset. Cutting Edge 2025: Te toka tū moana was no different.

Looking back to see how far we’ve come

More than 17 years ago, I was a service manager for a Pacific non-government organisation in Christchurch. Our mental health and addiction team back then consisted of one clinician for youth and one for adults, making up the bulk of all the Pasifika practitioners in the South Island.

One thing stood out at Cutting Edge in those days – we didn’t see many of our own people, few Pasifika practitioners at all. I still remember joining my first teleconference for the National Pacific Treatment Forum (Addiction) with four teams across Aotearoa and only eight practitioners. The Pasifika addiction workforce was small enough that you could fit us all on one teleconference line.

The realities for our Pasifika addiction workforce in those early days were stark. We didn’t yet know how significant the harm from alcohol and other drugs was for Pasifika. We didn’t have data on access rates or unmet need, and didn’t have integrated holistic Pasifika solutions. We did know, and still know, “E fofo le alamea le alamea” – that the solutions for Pasifika communities come from within our own communities.

A changing landscape

Fast forward to Cutting Edge 2025, and the energy in the room was unmistakably different – a larger Pasifika presence, stronger voices, more community-led solutions, more cultural grounding. Our aspirations have grown, and so has our clarity.

During the event, Helen Schmidt-Sopoaga was honoured with a DAPAANZ Lifetime Membership award for more than 20 years of service to the addiction sector in Aotearoa. This lined up beautifully with Phil Siataga’s keynote reflection, “E lele le toloa, ae o nisi timi e lē, toe fo’i i le vai, ‘ā e su’e se is nofoaga e malu ai – Though the toloa may return home, sometimes we find other places to live and call home.”

Aotearoa is our new home, and the world is different now. Our Pacific homelands have evolved into significant transit routes and destinations in the illicit drugs trade. Fiji, Samoa and Tonga have seen a surge in drug consumption and drug related crime, as domestic and international criminal networks move drugs through and to Aotearoa, Australia and the wider Pacific.

After 17 years, what do I take away from Cutting Edge 2025?

The Pasifika addiction workforce in Aotearoa is stronger, more skilled, more grounded and more connected than ever before. But the system we work in still has some way to go in responding to what our communities need.

Many of the reflections I walked away with align closely with what Pasifika communities continue to call for – a mental health and addiction system that honours who we are, how we heal and the realities we face as Pasifika people.

We know the path forward. Our communities are the experts in their own lives and they have told us again and again what works. Our lives are lived holistically, so our solutions need to be holistic. We belong to different ethnicities, are from different islands, and have different experiences of coming to and living in Aotearoa. So work with us, work with the experts when seeking to understand.

So many things have changed, but so much of what matters has not. This continues to drive our Pasifika addiction workforce to serve, grow and learn – so that one more policy, one more organisation, one more interaction with Pasifika people improves and supports us to have better lives.