The Manalagi: Aotearoa Pacific Rainbow Health and Wellbeing Project is funded by the Health Research Council of New Zealand. It aims to create a safe cultural research space for Pacific Rainbow+ communities to communicate their unique health and wellbeing needs.

As both Pacific and Rainbow individuals face stigma as a barrier to their health and wellbeing in New Zealand, the Manalagi project takes the ethos of co-community driven, embedded and owned, to empower Pacific Rainbow communities to help co-design health policy and services through research.

The project will document self-reported health information for those who self-identify as part of the Pacific Rainbow community through a three-year period. This consists of extensive community consultation; delivery of a Pacific Rainbow Health Survey aimed at collecting 500-1000 respondents, and a culturally-appropriate collection and documentation of 50-60 Pacific Rainbow individual narratives detailing their experiences with health service delivery through the blending of talanoa, Pacific concepts of space like the va, and relationality with qualitative interviews.