Rate My Professor Angela Upsdell

Angela Upsdell serves as Research Fellow in the Department of Medicine at the University of Otago, Wellington, part of the Faculty of Medicine within the Health Sciences Division. She is also a Physiotherapy Advanced Clinician in the Chronic Pain Service at Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora Counties Manukau, where she works as a physiotherapist in the South Auckland region. Upsdell completed a Master of Health Sciences (MHSc) at Auckland University of Technology in 2021, focusing her thesis on New Zealand resident Sāmoan health and illness beliefs about chronic pain and healthcare management: a qualitative descriptive study. Her research addresses ethnic disparities and inequities in access to and outcomes from chronic pain services in Aotearoa New Zealand, with a particular emphasis on Pasifika populations.

Upsdell's key publications include 'Ethnic disparities in attendance at New Zealand's chronic pain services' in the New Zealand Medical Journal (2018), 'Inequity in outcomes from New Zealand chronic pain services' also in the New Zealand Medical Journal (2021), 'Health and illness beliefs regarding pain and pain management of New Zealand resident Samoan community leaders: a qualitative interpretive study based on Pasifika paradigms' in the Health Promotion Journal of Australia (2023), 'Aotearoa New Zealand Tongan residents’ attitudes to chronic cough and access to healthcare' in the New Zealand Journal of Physiotherapy (2024), and ''It's more than just kale (cough)'. New Zealand Sāmoan attitudes to living with chronic cough and healthcare access' in the Journal of Primary Health Care (2025). She has contributed to the iSelf-Help co-designed culturally appropriate online pain management programme and co-authored the International Association for the Study of Pain fact sheet 'Pain in Indigenous Peoples from Colonized Countries' (2025). Her work explores attitudes to chronic cough and healthcare access among Sāmoan and Tongan residents, as well as health and illness beliefs regarding pain management in Samoan communities.