This report updates an earlier article published in 2012 describing the sociodemographic profile of students enrolled with the University of Otago’s Division of Health Sciences in 2010. In 2012, the University implemented a policy mechanism intended to ensure that all of its health professional programmes produce graduates that can appropriately meet the needs of the ethnic and socioeconomic realities in the communities that employ these people. This paper describes the sociodemographic characteristics of students accepted into eight health professional programmes at the University of Otago in 2016. Analysis of anonymised student data from the University of Otago’s central student records system revealed marked increases between 2010 and 2016 in the proportion of Māori (124% increase) and Pacific students (121% increase) in health professional programmes, particularly in medicine and dentistry (increases of 179% and 133% respectively). In addition, the proportion of students from rural areas increased from 19.2% in 2010 to 22.5% in 2016 and the proportion of female students rose from 59.6% to 61.3%. There was little change in the overall socioeconomic profile.
