Kyle Eggleton

Dr Kyle Eggleton is the Associate Dean (Rural) in the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences. He is also the Director of the Rural Health Unit and a rural general practitioner (GP) working part time in the Hokianga on the west coast of the Northland region of New Zealand.

Kyle’s early childhood was spent in a small village in the Hokianga. After graduating from medical school he returned to Northland to work as a rural GP. Early in his career he saw how many of his patients had poor health outcomes. The reasons for this were due to the structure of the health system, racism and the impact of colonisation. He started working for a Māori health provider and became interested in how Māori led and community designed projects could improve health.

He has experience in community led research focussing on addressing health inequity. Examples are housing interventions to improve wellbeing and community designed weight loss programmes.

His university roles have included:
• establishing a rural stream for medical students,
• developing a rural strategy,
• implementing a new regional-rural admission scheme into professional health programmes,
• designing a rural curriculum,
• implementing a new rural medical immersion programme

Kyle graduated from the University of Auckland with a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery. He also has a Master in Medical Science, a Master in Public Health and a PhD. Kyle’s PhD explored the concept of measuring quality of Māori health providers and used a methodology aligned to Kaupapa Māori. He focussed on critiquing non-Māori concepts that controlled Māori health providers.