Rate My Professor Salina Iupati

Dr. Salina Iupati, MBChB, FRNZCGP, FAChPM, is a palliative medicine specialist with over 30 years of experience in medical practice. She serves as a Palliative Medicine Consultant at Te Omanga Hospice in Lower Hutt, New Zealand, where she has worked for the past decade, providing community-based specialist palliative care including home-based care, 24-hour telephone and nursing support, an inpatient unit for intensive symptom management, family support services, and consultation-liaison roles with local hospitals, general practitioners, and aged residential care facilities. The hospice implements both wrap-around and collaborative models of care. Prior to specializing in palliative medicine, Iupati practiced as a general practitioner for 10 years, seven of which were with a Māori health provider in a high-needs area, following hospital experience during training. She completed her Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine at the University of Otago Dunedin School of Medicine, submitting her thesis "Future Model of Care for Community-Based Specialist Palliative Care Services" in October 2024. Her research utilized a critical realism framework, incorporating a systematic review, a national survey of all 32 New Zealand hospices, and qualitative interviews with 27 hospice leaders to develop evidence-based hybrid collaborative-wrap-around models addressing future demands from aging populations, complex care needs, equity for Māori and minorities, cultural safety per Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Te Whare Tapa Whā, rural challenges, and public health integration.

Iupati's key publications include the first integrated systematic review of effective community specialist palliative care models, demonstrating improvements in quality of life, equity, integration, and reduced health service utilization (Journal of Palliative Medicine, 2023); a survey revealing hospice service snapshots, gaps in after-hours access, non-malignant care, and Māori engagement (New Zealand Medical Journal, 2022); and a retrospective cohort study on place of death for people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (Journal of Palliative Care, 2025). She received the Te Omanga Hospice Foundation Murray Bond Research Fellowship and Lottery Health Research PhD Scholarships. Iupati presented her work at the Asia Pacific Hospice Palliative Care Conference (2023), Hospice New Zealand Conference (2022), and ANZSPM webinar (2023), and in 2024 was invited by ANZSPM Aotearoa to join Te Whatu Ora’s Adult Model of Care Working Group for national policy development. Her contributions enhance palliative care delivery in Aotearoa New Zealand.