About 70 people last week attended the launch at Dunedin Hospital of the Southern DHB Maori Health Plan 2011-2012, the first of its kind for the southern board.
Mr Clarke told the Otago Daily Times the plan put Maori health to the "forefront" of DHB "structures and systems" for delivering healthcare to Maori, in both the community and in hospitals.
Maori suffered similar poor health outcomes in the South as they did nationally, a situation he blamed on socioeconomic inequalities.
The situation required a "whole-of-government" approach, of which the DHB was a part.
In the South, Maori immunisation rates were a success story, with 95% of 2-year-olds fully immunised compared with 93.6% for the DHB.
A problem area was respiratory illness, which in the South was more common in Maori, because of the cooler climate, he said.
The plan identified asthma, smokefree environments, and accuracy of ethnicity data collection as key local priority areas, alongside a raft of South Island and national priority areas.
"Every health professional or health worker, whether a nurse, general practitioner or a community support worker, has a role to play to improve health disparities between Maori and non-Maori," the plan's introduction said.
