Lay summary
Medicines are extremely important for treating illness and for keeping people healthy. Yet many groups of people miss out on medicines they need, or do not use them appropriately. This project will be a collaboration between researchers and PHARMAC, to inform PHARMAC's work to improve equity in medicines use and access. We will select households from the following groups: Māori, Pacific, people living in poverty, and refugees, and use a variety of methods such as interviews (including in-depth kanohi ki te kanohi and shorter phone interviews) and observation, to explore their interactions with the healthcare system and the barriers to accessing and using medicines appropriately. We will follow households for a year, mapping their journeys through the healthcare system, exploring whether and how their needs are met, identifying how this could be improved, so that PHARMAC can use this information to inform their policy and programmes.