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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.
Funding Opportunities
The HRC allocates funding through an annual funding round for researcher initiated projects, Requests for Proposals, and a range of career development awards.
About Us
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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Media Release18 September 2017
A new programme will carry out an in-depth analysis of the unprecedented water supply outbreak in Havelock North last August where more than 5000 people were infected with the bacteria Campylobacter.
Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) Chief Executive Professor Kath McPherson announced today that it was investing $437,949 for the research programme – a special funding allocation awarded due to the significance of New Zealand’s largest water supply contamination event. This research would provide the opportunity for health officials, local authorities and communities at large to be better prepared.
“Thankfully public health crises like this are rare, but when we do have one it’s important that we take the opportunity to learn as much as we can from it so that it doesn’t happen again, or at the very least that we can respond much quicker to greatly lessen the impact on our people’s health,” said Professor McPherson.
Professor McPherson said this programme of research will bring together experts from across the health and academic sectors to support the region.
Hawke’s Bay District Health Board Medical Officer of Health, Dr Nicholas Jones, would lead the programme along with Professor Michael Baker from the University of Otago’s Department of Public Health in Wellington. Lead investigators include Dr Brent Gilpin, Dr Jillian Sherwood, Dr Claire Newbern and Dr Mehnaz Adnan from ESR (Institute of Environmental Science and Research); Dr Tiffany Walker, Dr Colin Hutchinson and Dr Tim Frendin from Hawke’s Bay District Health Board; and Dr Jonathan Marshall from Massey University. Dr Anita Jagroop-Dearing from Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT) will manage the research.
The programme is made up of six separate studies, each covering different aspects of the Campylobacter outbreak. These include a detailed assessment of the outbreak and the public health sector’s response to it; an investigation into the longer-term health impacts of the outbreak; and an exploration of non-traditional early warning detection tools that could have potentially helped public health professionals identify the outbreak sooner.
Dr Jones said that despite Hawke’s Bay District Health Board and local councils having already gathered extensive data on human illness, exposure and risk factors, and drinking water and environmental sources of Campylobacter, there was a unique opportunity for further analysis to gain maximum benefit of the data collected.
“This outbreak is the largest recognised Campylobacter outbreak to date in New Zealand,” said Dr Jones.
“Thanks to the HRC’s funding, we’ll be able to delve further into the detail to gain insights into the health impacts of a gastroenteritis outbreak of this scale, as well as evaluate the effectiveness of public health interventions and messaging.”
“All New Zealand communities will benefit from the programme’s findings. The results will also be of international interest as documented water supply outbreaks of this size are unusual,” he said.
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Researcher Dr Riz Firestone, Massey UniversityMedia Release31 August 2017
A new study will help empower Pacific communities to tackle the alarmingly high rate of prediabetes in Pacific youth and adults as part of the government’s push to improve the management of long-term health conditions in New Zealand.
Massey University research fellow Dr Riz Firestone, of Samoan descent, has received almost $1 million in health research funding to develop and put in practice a Pacific community-based intervention programme to reduce prediabetes – the precursor to full-blown diabetes.
This funding is part of the long-term conditions joint research partnership between the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC), Ministry of Health, and the Healthier Lives National Science Challenge.
Dr Firestone’s study will establish a Pasifika prediabetes youth empowerment programme involving Pacific youth (15–24 years old) from community groups in South Waikato and Auckland. This will build on Dr Firestone’s recent HRC-funded pilot study where a group of Pacific youth were taught how to plan and champion community-based interventions to counteract the key public health issues of obesity.
“Young people are critical partners in the decision-making process to reduce risk factors for prediabetes. Through our programme, these youths will acquire the knowledge and skills they need as key advocates to empower their peers, families, and communities to lead healthier lives,” says Dr Firestone.
Pacific people in New Zealand experience greater health inequities across a large number of poor health outcomes compared to the general population, including obesity, which is a major modifiable risk factor for developing prediabetes.
The rate of prediabetes for Pacific people ranges from 13.6 per cent in youth and up to 57 per cent in older age groups. In comparison, about 7 per cent of New Zealand European youth and 44.5 per cent of older adults have prediabetes.
Also receiving funding through this research partnership is Dr Michael Epton, Director of the Canterbury Respiratory Research Group at Christchurch Hospital. Dr Epton’s study aims to address New Zealand’s low referral and attendance rates for rehabilitation programmes for people with multiple long-term conditions (LTCs), such as diabetes, heart failure, arthritis, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Dr Epton says current approaches to rehabilitation for people with multiple LTCs focus too much on the biological aspects of their diseases, and don’t include all the aspects of wellbeing that are important for improving health.
“Rather than developing new disease-specific interventions, we’ll work together with communities to develop and try initiatives that help people with multiple LTCs access community support, increase their sense of connectedness within their community, improve physical activity, and thus live lives they feel are fulfilling and worthwhile,” says Dr Epton.
HRC Chief Executive Professor Kath McPherson says this latest announcement extends the government’s allocation earlier in 2017 of more than $5.7 million in research funding through the long-term conditions partnership for diabetes prevention and management.
“These two additional research studies the partnership has funded crucially recognise the part that communities play in generating ideas that might work to relieve the huge physical and mental toll that chronic health conditions have on the lives of hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders, and the immense challenge this poses for our health system. Our goal is not only to help New Zealanders live longer, but also to live longer in good health,” says Professor McPherson.
Dr Ridvan (Riz) Firestone
Centre for Public Health Research, Massey University, Wellington
The Pasifika Prediabetes Youth Empowerment Programme (PPYEP)
$999,850, 36 monthsDr Michael Epton
Director of Canterbury Respiratory Research Group, Christchurch Hospital
WellConnected NZ: Improving individuals’ health by strengthening community connectedness – a proof of concept initiative
$1,129,598, 24 months -
News Article21 August 2017
We've had a big increase in the number of applicants applying for a HRC Pacific career development award in our 2018 funding round, which closed in July this year.
This round we had a total of 45 Pacific career development award applications compared with 26 applications in the HRC's 2017 funding round. The biggest jump was seen in the number of applications for the Sir Thomas Davis Te Patu Kite Rangi Ariki research fellowship (up by 4), Pacific summer studentships (up by 6), and knowledge translation grants (up by 7).
The HRC's manager of Pacific research investment, Tolotea Lanumata, has spent a lot of time this year going around to different education institutes to talk with their emerging Pacific researchers about applying for funding, and she says she's delighted by the response.
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Professor Colin Brown (photo: Otago University)Media Release15 August 2017
Otago University researchers have discovered a new trigger that stimulates the release of oxytocin from the brain in pregnancy – the hormone responsible for contracting the uterus during birth.
The protein kisspeptin is well established as being important for fertility and puberty. However, the Otago team, led by Professor Colin Brown of the Department of Physiology and Brain Health Research Centre, have now found that kisspeptin also causes oxytocin cells in the brain to get “excited”, triggering the rhythmic contractions of the uterus.
The study found that a specific group of brain cells that control oxytocin cells begin to make kisspeptin in late pregnancy, and that giving kisspeptin only excites oxytocin cells in late-pregnant rats, not in virgin, early-pregnant or mid-pregnant rats.
If kisspeptin is normally only released in late pregnancy, the research team believes it’s possible that, in humans, the early release of kisspeptin might increase the risk of preterm birth – that is birth which occurs more than three weeks before the baby is due.
Professor Brown says the discovery, which was published in the Journal of Physiology1, could potentially provide an opportunity to develop new therapies to manage pregnancies at risk of preterm birth.
“Pregnant women who lack oxytocin will likely have a delayed birth, and this can be reasonably well managed by administering a dose of oxytocin. The problem arises when women are at the other end of the spectrum and oxytocin is secreted too early in their pregnancy causing preterm delivery. Currently, in most cases of preterm birth, doctors don’t know why it happens,” says Professor Brown.
In New Zealand about 7 to 8 per cent of women deliver their babies preterm. Alarmingly, says Professor Brown, this percentage, which is consistent across the developed world, is not changing, and if anything, is increasing.
“To the best of our knowledge, the only role of kisspeptin in late pregnancy is to excite oxytocin cells. So, it could be that blocking the effects of kisspeptin on oxytocin cells might provide a more specific therapy to manage pregnancies at risk of preterm delivery than those currently in use,” says Professor Brown.
The significance of these findings, funded by a $1 million Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) project grant, has led to follow on funding as part of the $5 million HRC-funded programme ‘Healthier pregnancy, healthy babies’, led by Otago Professor David Grattan of the Department of Anatomy and Centre for Neuroendocrinology, of which Professor Brown is also a member.
Through this programme, Professor Brown and his team are investigating whether the presence of high levels of another hormone in pregnancy – placental lactogen – stimulates kisspeptin into action. They are collaborating closely with Professor Lesley McCowan, an expert in high-risk pregnancies from the University of Auckland, on this new line of research.
HRC Chief Executive Professor Kath McPherson says preterm delivery is the most common cause of death in newborn babies in New Zealand, and those babies who survive preterm delivery have low birth weight and are more likely to suffer chronic illness as adults.
“Fundamental research like this into the biological processes that control pregnancy is a crucial first step towards developing drugs to effectively treat those women at risk of problem pregnancies or to identify biomarkers that can help doctors determine early on who is at risk of preterm delivery and save babies lives,” says Professor McPherson.
Kisspeptin was named by scientists in the city of Hershey, Pennsylvania, home of the famous Hershey chocolate company in 2001 who discovered this previously unknown peptide. They were inspired by Hershey ‘kisses’, a form of Hershey chocolate.
Publication details:
1 Seymour AJ, Scott V, Augustine RA, Bouwer GT, Campbell RE, Brown CH. (2017) Development of an excitatory kisspeptin projection to the oxytocin system in late pregnancy. Journal of Physiology 595.3 (pp 825-838).
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