Jason (Ngāpuhi) is an author, epidemiologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Public Health at the University of Otago (Wellington campus). He has been a public health researcher for the past 15 years, and is the director of the Cancer and Chronic Conditions (C3) Research Group. Jason’s research focusses on describing and understanding the drivers of health disparities, particularly for Māori in Aotearoa. He has written or co-written more than 100 papers for academic journals globally, mostly in the areas of cancer, diabetes, surgical mortality and rheumatic fever.
A keen writer since childhood, Jason released his first book The Twisted Chain in 2024 (Otago University Press). The Twisted Chain mixes personal memoir, medical history and public health call-to-action in the context of the childhood illness rheumatic fever. In 2023 he was part of a team awarded the Health Research Council (HRC) Liley Medal for research into the causes of rheumatic fever.
Jason was born in Whangārei, and was fortunate to spend all the long summers of his childhood on the coast around Whananāki. He now lives in the Mahurangi region north of Auckland, with his wife Sarah and his two children Liv and Noah. In his spare time, he loves to go on adventures with his whānau or hit one of the many fabulous Mahurangi tramping spots with a group of local dads.
During his residency Jason is working on a comprehensive, New Zealand-specific overview of cancer, focussed on the lay-reader who has large gaps in their understanding of this complex issue. As such, the purpose of this cancer book project is to produce an accessible, simply (but ideally beautifully) written overview of cancer for the lay New Zealand reader.