This book maps official endeavours to meet Maori health needs during the first hundred years of organised settlement in New Zealand. Focusing on policy initiatives rather than health outcomes, Maori Health and Government Policy explores four major themes: the administration and funding of Maori health; the association between Maori and hospitals; the subsidised medical officers who provided primary health care; and infection control and sanitary measures. Other topics include the role of missionary medicine in the 1840s and 1850s and Maori health research. 

Drawing on a wide range of sources and making frequent reference to individual circumstance, Dow traces the  response of successive governments to Maori health needs. He shows how health services for Maori developed in an ad hoc fashion. Between 1840 and 1940, there was no single set of standards of health care for Maori; this piecemeal policy has had a lasting legacy.