Media release

From: Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC)

NZ research sector awarded $53.7 million to tackle a range of health issues
 

The Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) has today announced $53.7 million in government funding for research into pressing health issues, including a large trial to help New Zealanders quit vaping and a project to improve the health and wellbeing outcomes of young Māori released from prison and youth justice residences.
 

HRC Chief Executive Professor Sunny Collings says the 44 Project Grants supported through this funding provide exciting opportunities to help advance our knowledge and drive meaningful change in the health system.

“We are fortunate to have an extremely talented pool of health researchers in Aotearoa. These project grants are an important way for us to help develop and sustain the country’s health research workforce so they can continue to do the necessary mahi to improve health outcomes for New Zealanders,” says Professor Collings.
 

University of Auckland’s Associate Professor Natalie Walker and her team will use their grant to carry out a large community-based clinical trial of two low-cost interventions to help New Zealanders stop vaping. The trial will test whether cytisine – a medicine that partially blocks the effects of nicotine on the brain – is more effective than a tapered reduction in nicotine, when accompanied with text behavioural support from the New Zealand Quitline.

Associate Professor Natalie Walker says it is inevitable that vaping in New Zealand will continue to increase as new tobacco control policies come into effect that will decrease the number of tobacco retailers and only allow reduced nicotine tobacco to be sold.
 

“These policy changes in the Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan will make medical nicotine replacement therapy and vapes (e-cigarettes) the only legal nicotine available for smokers to manage withdrawal symptoms,” says Associate Professor Walker.
 

“Over time, people who vape may also wish to stop, yet little evidence exists on the best ways to support people to do this. Our trial plans to add to that evidence base, as ideally being both smoke and vape free is optimal for health.”
 

“The priority remains that people should not smoke cigarettes, which kill about 5,000 New Zealanders a year1. Our trial will also assess whether interventions for quitting vaping have any unintended consequences on smoking rates.”
 

Dr Paula Toko King (Te Aupōuri, Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Whātua, Waikato Tainui, Ngāti Maniapoto) and Charlizza Matehe (Ngāti Kahungunu) from the community-based rangatahi Māori research organisation Toi Matarua are co-leading a Rangahau Hauroa Māori project to explore culturally safe and effective pathways to improve the health and wellbeing of mokopuna Māori aged 10 to 24 years following release from youth justice residences and prisons.
 

Dr King says community re-entry, including release from incarceration and the days, weeks, months and years following, is a crucial intervention point for addressing the health and wellbeing impacts of incarceration on mokopuna Māori.
 

“Child and youth incarceration is increasingly recognised as a determinant of health and wellbeing across the life course, with age at first incarceration an important predictor of outcomes. Our project will provide the most comprehensive knowledge in Aotearoa to date about community re-entry for mokopuna Māori. This is an area where we need effective solutions, not only for Māori, but also for Indigenous children and young people around the world,” says Dr King.
 

One of three Pacific-focused grants has gone to two emerging Pacific health researchers, Dr Zaramasina Clark from the School of Biological Sciences, Research Trust of Victoria University of Wellington, and Dr Edmond Fehoko from the Department of Human Nutrition, University of Otago. The pair will co-lead a study to identify how assisted reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilisation (IVF) can better serve New Zealand’s Pacific population, who experience higher levels of infertility than other ethnicities in New Zealand yet are among the least likely to seek fertility treatments.
 

One important consideration the team will explore is the contentious clinical use of body mass index (BMI) to prioritise patients who seek assisted reproductive technologies through the public health system, a practice that disadvantages ethnicities with higher BMI such as Pacific and Māori women. Their project aims to provide critical data for evaluating whether the use of BMI cut-offs for prioritising publicly funded assisted reproductive technology treatments are fit for purpose in New Zealand.