Early life and family
Redican was born Aseta Okesene at Tuasivi on the island of Savaiʻi in Samoa on 26 December 1941. Her mother, Matelina Okesene, was a nurse, and her father, Ioane Okesene, was a physician. Her father had changed his family name from Tilialo to Okesene, a Samoan transliteration of 'oxygen', when he graduated from medical school in Fiji, and he gave all of his children chemistry-related names; Aseta means 'acid'.
Aseta Okesene moved to New Zealand as a 14-year-old in 1956 when she was awarded a government scholarship to attend a boarding school in Stratford. She went on to study at the University of Otago, earning in 1964 a postgraduate diploma in physiotherapy, the first Pacific person to do so.
In about 1966, she married Peter Joseph Redican, and the couple had two children; Peter Redican died in 2019. She is the aunt of rugby league players Hitro and Paul Okesene.
She became a naturalised New Zealand citizen in 1969.
Career
Health services leader
Moving into population health services, Redican established the Pacific Heartbeat programme at the National Heart Foundation of New Zealand, where she created a model that trained Pacific people to work in their own communities rather than distributing printed material to them. Such an approach was considered radical at the time, but it has since been used across the healthcare sector.
Redican's leadership within the Northern Regional Health Authority (North Health) saw the establishment of a number of Pacific primary healthcare providers and community partnerships that still exist today. Later, as the first general manager of Pacific health with the Auckland District Health Board, she established the Pacific Family Support Service at Starship Hospital, two Pacific primary health organisations, and ensured that Pacific health was included as one of the organisation's strategic priorities.
Redican was a founder of the Pacific Medical Association, and is a founding member of PACIFICA Inc, a national organisation for Pacific women living in New Zealand, which she represented on the committee monitoring the implementation of the Cartwright Inquiry recommendations.
She is also a founding member of the National Council of Samoan Women in New Zealand.
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