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We manage the Government's investment in health research. Our vision is to improve the health and quality of life of all New Zealanders.
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The HRC allocates funding through an annual funding round for researcher initiated projects, Requests for Proposals, and a range of career development awards.
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We invest in a broad range of research on issues important to New Zealand, and support the development of health research careers. Our mission is 'benefiting New Zealand through health research'.
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We produce a wide range of publications and documents, which provide information about funding opportunities, research outcomes and HRC-related news.
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We help ensure all research involving human participants is based on good science, meets ethical standards and complies with best practice.
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News and Media
Our latest and archived media releases and news articles.
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Professor Cynthia FarquharMedia ReleaseAn Auckland academic and fertility specialist whose research could revive support for a fertility treatment that’s less invasive than IVF, has just received a top honour from the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC).
Professor Cynthia (Cindy) Farquhar, postgraduate professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Auckland and consultant clinician at Fertility Plus and National Women’s at the Auckland District Health Board, was last night awarded the HRC’s prestigious Liley Medal at the Royal Society Te Apārangi 2018 Research Honours Aotearoa held at Te Papa.
The Medal recognises her study into Intrauterine Insemination (IUI), published in The Lancet last November.
In a clinical trial, Professor Farquhar showed for the first time that IUI (a medical procedure to place sperm in the uterus) combined with ovarian stimulation (with either clomiphene or letrozole medication) was three times more effective than trying to conceive naturally in women with unexplained infertility and an unfavourable prognosis for natural conception.
Though IUI is widely used in New Zealand, the UK, USA and Europe as a less-invasive and less expensive alternative to in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), before now there had been little evidence of its success rate compared to ‘expectant management’ (when couples are advised to be sexually active around the likely time of ovulation for a chance of conceiving naturally). Consequently, in 2013 the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommended that IUI should not be routinely offered for couples with unexplained infertility.
Professor Farquhar says the NICE recommendation will now be reconsidered as a result of her team’s findings which prove that the treatment is worth continuing.
In the trial, 101 women receiving IUI treatment had 31 live births, compared with 9 live births for the 100 women assigned to ‘expectant management’. The study concluded that IUI could be offered as a safe and effective first-line strategy for couples with unexplained infertility.
Professor Farquhar credits the breakthrough to the medication giving couples a helping hand by enabling more eggs to be released, and timing conception right by getting sperm into the uterus and thus halfway to the egg.
She adds that IUI offers a simpler type of fertility treatment than IVF, which is more complicated but thought by many to be more effective.
In New Zealand, couples with unexplained infertility who are eligible for publicly-funded fertility treatment have the option of either one cycle of IVF-type treatment (or microsurgery on the fallopian tubes or testes if that’s more appropriate than IVF) or four cycles of IUI treatment. The next step for Professor Farquhar is to test the effectiveness of four cycles of IUI compared with IVF, to help determine the most effective first-line treatment for couples to consider.
The HRC’s chief executive, Professor Kath McPherson, says it’s imperative to keep testing and building the evidence that underpins clinical practices. “Professor Farquhar’s study has provided evidence in a field where less invasive and more affordable treatment options are very much needed.
“These findings are a significant advance in knowledge that could inform healthcare going forward, and help couples make better-informed decisions about treatment,” she says.
Professor Farquhar has over 280 peer-reviewed publications. She is the past Chair of the Perinatal and Maternal Mortality Review Committee and currently coordinating editor of the Cochrane Gynaecology and Fertility Group as well as lead methodologist for the World Health Organization Fertility Guidelines in 2018-2019. -
Dr Colin McArthurMedia ReleaseThousands of patients in Intensive Care Units (ICUs) have benefited from the clinical trials led in New Zealand by Auckland City Hospital intensive care specialist and clinical researcher Dr Colin McArthur.For more than two decades, Dr McArthur and his colleagues have questioned and tested treatment options available to critically-ill patients in the ICU, to reveal the safest, most effective ways to treat illnesses that pose a threat to life.Many of these trials have changed guidelines and clinical practices in ICUs worldwide, and tonight they’ve earned Dr McArthur the Health Research Council of New Zealand’s (HRC) Beaven Medal for excellence in translational health research.The award, presented at the Royal Society Te Apārangi 2018 Research Honours Aotearoa, not only recognises the impact of Dr McArthur and his colleagues’ work on patient care, but in establishing the ICU as a place where much-needed research is done and is making a difference.In presenting the Award, HRC chief executive Professor Kath McPherson, praised Dr McArthur’s success in driving translational research and inspiring other clinicians to do so.
“He’s shown outstanding leadership in his field and created a process where robust, wellpowered clinical evidence can help deliver the best possible outcomes for the critically ill. And he’s done it all from the frontline of clinical care,” she said.Prior to 1994 and the formation of the Australia and New Zealand Intensive Care Society Clinical Trials Group (ANZICS CTG), clinical research was uncommon in New Zealand ICUs. It was in 1996 – when Dr McArthur joined this group and became the New Zealand lead on large-scale multi-centre trials across New Zealand, Australia and further afield – that things started to change.The ANZICS CTG’s first randomised controlled trial, published in The Lancet in 2000, looked into low-dose dopamine, a common treatment at the time for protection against kidney failure. The trial found that low-dose dopamine did not influence the progression of acute kidney injury, and consequently the treatment was removed from guidelines and clinical practice in ICUs worldwide.From there, Dr McArthur and his colleagues at the ANZICS CTG gained their first major grant from the Health Research Council and the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council to investigate whether the choice of resuscitation fluids for patients in ICUs affected survival.The SAFE study evaluated the risk of death in 7000 patients (in 16 ICUs) receiving expensive albumin fluid versus those receiving simple saline fluid, and found that both treatments resulted in similar outcomes (in fact albumin was found to be harmful in a sub-set of patients). Published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2004, the study was described as ‘not only a landmark trial, but also a milestone for the discipline of critical care medicine… heralding a new era in critical care marked by the large, simple randomised trial’.Dr McArthur and colleagues have since gained HRC project funding for a host of trials that have been published and recognised internationally, and in 2016 he was the first fulltime hospital clinician to successfully win an HRC-funded five-year programme grant.He says, through this funding support, lives have been saved and New Zealand has been able to develop research capability in intensive care clinicians and trainees, ensuring the longterm sustainability of research in the ICU. “Because of the systems and processes we’ve put in place, clinicians now have a process and system for answering questions that they see every day.”He adds that with the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand coordinating and managing the trials undertaken, New Zealand ICU clinicians are increasingly leading the charge on a number of studies and are now inviting other countries to join their trials.He says receiving the Beaven Medal is a group achievement. “The Medal acknowledges not just me and the many others involved, but also that intensive care research has come of age; that it is a strong player in the clinical research space, and we’re seeing its impact on the wider international stage. It’s good to see we’ve made that transition and it’s now being acknowledged.” -
Media ReleaseThe researchers at Te Kotahi Research Institute at the University of Waikato have succeeded in bringing together Māori providers, researchers and policy-makers to deliver maximum benefit to the communities they work with.
Their commitment and effectiveness in advancing Māori health research and knowledge, and in maximising the uptake of their findings, has just earned them the Health Research Council of New Zealand’s inaugural Te Tohu Rapuora award for Māori Health Research Leadership, Excellence and Contribution.
The Award was presented at the Royal Society Te Apārangi 2018 Research Honours Aotearoa in Te Papa, in recognition of the Institute’s significant contribution to Māori health and its collaborative work with iwi, hapū and other Māori health stakeholders.
Health Research Council (HRC) chief executive Professor Kath McPherson acknowledged the Institute’s commitment to Māori wellbeing and to building the capacity and capability of the Māori health research workforce to serve the community.
“They’ve helped strengthen Kaupapa Māori methodologies in the Māori health research space by collaborating with community about which research matters most. They’ve worked with researchers across the country, providing workshops, and connecting health researchers with iwi researchers,” she said.
Researcher and senior advisor to Te Kotahi Research Institute, Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith, says that building capability is a key focus for the Institute.
“Graduate students that work with us get a good grounding in those skills that you can’t teach in an academic context. You can’t teach people how to form strong, ethical relationships that will last a long time, you can’t teach people to problem-solve some of those crises that occur in the real research world: that’s the stuff you learn in doing research.”
She adds that Te Kotahi Institute also works with a range of advisors internationally, to help ensure its research is connected to whānau and hapū but also connected internationally. “The great thing for me about working in partnership with others is it’s not all about us as academic researchers, it’s about being part of a bigger team, building community relationships and building momentum. We try to leave communities with more research capacity at the end of our projects than they had at the beginning.”
Researchers from the Institute have led and facilitated projects in a number of areas, including homelessness, suicide prevention, sexual violence, historical trauma and the impact of colonisation on whānau.
Alongside their research in the area of healing from trauma and violence, researchers within Te Kotahi have also investigated the wellbeing of tamariki and mokopuna, and worked with whānau who have had babies in Neonatal Intensive Care units and shared their insights with Māori medical students and midwife organisations.
Institute director, Associate Professor Leonie Pihama, highlights that critical to the work undertaken by Te Kotahi is a commitment to Kaupapa Māori and working in ways that support whānau, hapū, iwi and Māori organisations to be self-determining in their research aspirations.
“We are thankful to have strong iwi support through Te Rōpū Manukura which includes representatives from Iwi that are connected to the University of Waikato, and the wide Māori networks that we work alongside. At Te Kotahi we ensure that the research we engage in is defined by the aspirations and questions that come from our communities. That is what drives and inspires all of the researchers that we work with across the country.”
This is echoed by Professor Smith who notes, “We’re not working in a vacuum, we’re working as part of a larger momentum of research with a commitment to the wellbeing of our whānau, hapū and iwi; the wellbeing of our people, our environment, our institutions and our practices.”
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News ArticleAs consultation into New Zealand's first set of health research priorities continues, meeting dates with people from Māori, Pacific and disabled communities have been set for Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. To register your interest in attending a meeting, please contact Dr Alexandra Boyle at aboyle@hrc.govt.nz - if the cost of travel to attend a meeting is a concern, please let us know.
In Auckland, meetings are being held at the Quality Hotel, 10-20 Gladstone Rd, Parnell, on:
- Thursday 4 October, 9am – 11am with the Māori community
- Thursday 4 October, 11.30am – 1.30pm with the disabled community and disability sector (a Sign Language interpreter will be present)
- Thursday 4 October, 2.30pm – 4.30pm with the Pacific community
In Wellington at the Ministry of Health, 133 Molesworth Street, Thorndon, on:
- Tuesday 9 October, 10am – 12pm with the disabled community and disability sector (a Sign Language interpreter will be present)
- Tuesday 9 October, 2pm – 4pm with the Pacific community
- Wednesday 10 October, 9am – 11am with the Māori community
In Christchurch at The Atrium, 455 Hagley Avenue, on:
- Monday 1 October, 10am – 12pm with the disabled community and disability sector (a Sign Language interpreter will be present)
- Monday 1 October, 2pm – 4pm with the Pacific community
- Tuesday 2 October, 9am – 11am with the Māori community
In Dunedin at Dunedin Community House, 301 Moray Place, on:
- Monday 8 October, 11am – 1pm with the Māori community
- Monday 8 October, 2.30pm – 4.30pm with the Pacific community
- Tuesday 9 October, 9.30am – 11.30am with the disabled community and disability sector (a Sign Language interpreter will be present).
Input is being sought on the draft Strategic Investment Areas that will form the overarching 'framework' for the health research priorities. Stakeholders are also being asked to suggest priorities that might sit within this framework.
This consultation is a joint initiative between the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), and the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC). All the background information you need about the consultation and prioritisation process is available here
Online consultation remains open until 5pm on Friday 12 October.
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