Rate My Professor Allamanda Faatoese

Dr. Allamanda Faatoese is a Senior Research Fellow at the Christchurch Heart Institute in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Otago, Christchurch, holding a BSc and PhD. She joined the institute as a research assistant for the Hauora Manawa / Community Heart Study before completing her doctoral research focused on cardiovascular risk profiles of Māori and non-Māori communities, exploring novel biomarkers to stratify risk among Māori populations disproportionately affected by cardiovascular disease. Awarded the 2014 Health Research Council Pacific Postdoctoral Fellowship, her work advanced investigations into lipoprotein biomarkers and their associations with cardiovascular risk in Māori and non-Māori groups. Subsequent Heart Foundation NZ awards supported the recruitment of a Pacific Island cohort from Christchurch in collaboration with Pacific Trust Canterbury, forming the Pasifika Heart Study. As Head of the Pacific Heart Health Division in the Omics and Pacific Heart Health Laboratories, Dr. Faatoese's research examines cardiovascular risk factors—including circulating markers, genetics, and epigenetics—among Pasifika and indigenous communities. She also represents Christchurch on the University of Otago Division of Health Sciences Pacific Strategic Group, aimed at enhancing Pacific achievement in health sciences.

In addition to research, Dr. Faatoese convenes Pacific Health teaching in the medical curriculum, chairs the Pacific Health Teaching Sub-Committee, and serves as Associate Dean Pacific (Strategic) for the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences in Dunedin, advocating for Pacific student pathways and academic staff capacity building. Her contributions to the field include key publications such as 'Addressing significant inequity' in the New Zealand Medical Journal (2026, with Pickering et al.), 'Considerations for study design and analysis for ethically and culturally safe DNA methylation research in Aotearoa New Zealand' in SSM Population Health (2026, with Rolleston et al.), 'What's counted counts: The implications of underrepresentation for the application of epigenetic clocks in diverse populations' in Clinical Epigenetics (2025, with Gibbs et al.), and 'Lower NT-proBNP plasma concentrations in Pacific peoples with heart failure' in ESC Heart Failure (2025, with Pearson et al.). Through these efforts, she addresses health inequities in cardiovascular outcomes for ethnic minorities.