Introduction

The Tokelau Island Migrant Study was established in 1968 as a multidisciplinary study to test hypotheses relating to the process of change associated with migration, including factors influencing changing blood pressure patterns with age. In its broadest sense it is a study of the relationship between social change and health in this small Polynesian society (Prior et al., 1974). This has involved bringing together findings from three different scientific disciplines: ethnography, quantitative sociology, and epidemiology including genetic epidemiology. This report presents a brief review of the development of the project since it was commenced in 1968 together with a summary of some of the results of the cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses, particularly as regards body weight, diabetes, gout, hypertension and blood pressure. This synthesis outlines some of the dynamics and consequences of social change for individuals and populations. The study recognises that the migration process is complex and that it is taking place against the developing pattern of social change in two societies: Tokelau, the one from which the migrants originated, and New Zealand, the host country in which most of the migrants settled.

Tokelau is very small and, in geopolitical terms, isolated and insignificant. The three small atolls of Tokelau (Fakaofo, Nukunonu and Atafu) lie 480km north of Samoa and 3,200km from New Zealand (Figure 17.1). In 1966 there were 1901 Tokelauans in Tokelau and 445 in New Zealand. A hurricane in Tokelau led to the establishment of the Tokelau Resettlement

Programme by the New Zealand Government bringing Tokelauans to New Zealand.