Terryann Clark

Terryann Coralie Clark, known as TC, is a New Zealand Māori nursing academic, and as of 2023 is a full professor at the University of Auckland, specialising in Māori health, adolescent wellbeing and mental and sexual health.

Biography
Clark grew up in Moerewa. Her mother was a child of a closed adoption, and so Clark is only recently discovering her whakapapa. Her mother's adopted whānau are Ngāpuhi Nui Tonu. Clark was educated at Otiria Primary School and Bay of Islands College. She originally wanted to be an artist, although a school guidance counsellor suggested hairdressing. Clark didn't know anyone who had been to university. Her art teacher took her to the university in Auckland during a school trip, where she "thought the students didn't look that smart." Having passed Bursary, she applied for teaching, nursing, and art courses, and at her mother's suggestion, she pursued nursing at Manukau Institute of Technology. She worked as a Māori community health worker in Glen Innes and then at Auckland Sexual Health Services.

Clark completed a Master's in Public Health at the University of Auckland in 2002, with a thesis on sexual health in young Māori people. After making contacts during a conference in Los Angeles, she completed a PhD titled Factors associated with reduced depression and suicide risk among Māori high school student in New Zealand at the University of Minnesota. In 2008, she joined the faculty of the school of nursing at the University of Auckland as a senior lecturer. She was appointed to the Cure Kids professorial chair in Child and Adolescent Mental Health in July 2022.

Her research focuses on sexual and mental health, Māori health, and especially adolescent health. She is a founding member of the Adolescent Health Research Group, and has been part of collecting data on a long-term study of adolescents in 2001, 2007, 2012, and 2019. Clark is on the advisory panel for the 'A Better Start' National Science Challenge.

Clark has a prosthetic leg after being hit by a car in Minnesota. She credits taking up dog-sledding with helping with her recovery.

Awards
Clark and her team of won a University of Auckland Research Impact award in 2022, for their work "surveying the health and well-being of more than 36,000 teenagers [which] has provided a rich source of policy change for the better".