The forum that is gathering at the 2026 Pacific Islands Health Research Symposium (PIHRS), organised by the Fiji National University’s (FNU) Fiji Institute of Pacific Health Research (FIPHR) and the College of Medicine, Nursing & Health Sciences (CMNHS), will prepare and submit a statement outlining the key findings and recommendations emerging from the Symposium.

The statement will capture the outcomes of PIHRS 2026, which is currently underway at FNU’s Nasinu Campus and has brought together researchers, health professionals, practitioners, students and communities from across the Pacific and beyond.

Speaking at the opening of the symposium today, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Industries, Commerce, Business Development and Public Enterprises, Honourable Manoa Seru Kamikamica, committed to ensuring that the recommendations emerging from the gathering reach the highest levels of Government.

Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Fiji and Minister for Industries, Commerce, Business Development and Public Enterprises Honourable Manoa Seru Kamikamica

“For its part, Government makes the following commitment. The Organising Committee is asked to prepare a written statement of findings and recommendations at the close of this week. I undertake to convey that statement to Cabinet, and to see it referred formally to the Ministry of Health and Medical Services and to the ministries responsible for national development and statistics.”

“Research that does not reach Cabinet has limited capacity to change policy; Government will close that part of the distance, and asks the symposium to close the remainder,” he said.

Honourable Kamikamica also welcomed the regional and international delegations participating in this year’s symposium, highlighting the importance of collaboration in addressing the Pacific’s shared health challenges.

“To the visiting delegations from Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Samoa, Tonga, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, French Polynesia and the Cook Islands, and to our partners from Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, the United States and Japan: you are welcome in Fiji.”

“No single Pacific country has the scale to answer these questions in isolation, and there is little to be gained by any of us re-learning, at cost, a lesson a neighbour has already learned. Regional cooperation in health research is, in that sense, a practical matter as much as it is a matter of principle,” Honourable Kamikamica said.

He also acknowledged the students and early-career researchers presenting their work during the symposium, encouraging them as future leaders of the region’s health sector.

“To the students and early-career researchers presenting this week, some for the first time: a number of you will go on to lead this country’s and this region’s health institutions. This week is part of how that begins,” he said.

FNU Vice-Chancellor Professor Unaisi Nabobo-Baba said the symposium represented an important platform for strengthening Pacific-led research and ensuring that the region’s health priorities were informed by evidence generated within Pacific communities.

Vice-Chancellor Professor Unaisi Nabobo-Baba

“For too long, research was something that happened to the Pacific, rather than something the Pacific did for itself,” Professor Nabobo-Baba said.

Professor Nabobo-Baba added that PIHRS 2026 had adopted a new organising framework that would guide the symposium from 2026 to 2029, with a focus on Sustainable Development Goal 3 and its 13 targets.

“This year the symposium takes on a new organising frame. From 2026 through to 2029, PIHRS is oriented toward Sustainable Development Goal 3 and the thirteen targets beneath it, and we intend that alignment to deepen year on year, until countries reporting against those targets, and saying openly where the data are too weak to report at all, is a settled part of what happens here.”

“A gap in the evidence is a finding, not an embarrassment to be managed,” she stated.

Professor Nabobo-Baba said the focus on SDG 3 would not narrow the scope of research presented at the symposium.

“But SDG 3 is our direction of travel, not a narrowing of the subject. What you will see this week is the full range of Pacific health research — diabetes and cancer, TB and HIV, maternal and child health, oral health, mental health, rheumatic heart disease, planetary health, surveillance and digital health — a great deal of it the work of our own staff and our own students. That breadth is not a distraction from the theme. It is the evidence base the theme depends on,” she reiterated.

PIHRS 2026 continues at FNU’s Nasinu Campus this week, providing a platform for researchers, health professionals, policymakers, students and communities to share knowledge, strengthen partnerships and advance research that responds to the health priorities of the Pacific.

The symposium is expected to conclude with a statement of findings and recommendations that will provide an important link between Pacific health research and national policymaking.