News and Media

Our latest and archived media releases and news articles.

International collaboration for improving Indigenous health

News Article

Improving the health and wellness of Indigenous peoples in Australia, New Zealand and Canada is the goal driving a partnership between three medical research funding agencies.

In December 2017, the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC), the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) renewed their commitment to collaborate on mutual health research priorities for Indigenous peoples in these three countries.

In developing and undertaking any initiatives, the agencies will respect and harness the expertise, culture and values of the populations they represent – the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, Māori people, and the First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples – while supporting Indigenous methodological approaches to health and wellbeing research.

Previous agreements have prompted joint research action into areas of significant burden experienced by Indigenous peoples, including diabetes and suicide prevention, and strategic initiatives to support emerging researchers of Indigenous ancestry, including an international mentorship workshop.

Strengthening the Indigenous health research workforce, from early researchers and up, remains a central focus under the renewed agreement.

NHMRC, HRC and CIHR are in a strong position to set additional priorities this year having each worked with their communities recently to understand what matters most, which will also inform agencies' broader research strategies. This will prove invaluable throughout the partnership as agencies develop a joint action plan and re-assess priorities each year.

The three agencies have built a solid working relationship that spans 15 years. They are confident that positive and measurable outcomes with broader reach can be realised for Indigenous peoples and the research sector, while celebrating, reflecting and building on the gains that have already been made.

Pictured: Representatives of the three medical research funding agencies: From left, Mr Stacey Pene and Dr Tania Pocock from the Health Research Council of New Zealand, Professor Anne Kelso from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, and Dr Carrie Bourassa from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
Informing NZ science - Māori input a must

News Article

OPINION: The Health Research Council of New Zealand’s chief executive, Professor Kath McPherson, adds her voice to the debate stimulated by a Stuff column published earlier this week.

Earlier this week, Stuff published a piece titled The Treaty has no place in scientific endeavour. The twittersphere responded swiftly and reading the comments has been a mix of challenging, distressing and inspiring.

So, where does the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) stand? Well, we are one of the government agencies responsible for setting New Zealand’s health research priorities for the next 10 years, and I can tell you that the whole process is taking place in partnership with Māori. It must.

If you aren’t involved in science or the process of consultation in science, you might read the Stuff article and be persuaded that science is values-free, should be disconnected from societal views, and that it’s somehow pure in a way that consultation with Māori would negate.

The author is likely not entirely alone in thinking consultation with Māori or with lay members of society about what goes on in science is non-essential (or limiting). At times, I suspect, many have seen it to be more of an after-thought rather than integral. However, science leadership in New Zealand, and a growing number of scientists, are committed to supporting a different view, to get the very best science we can to benefit New Zealand.

I won’t repeat here all that has been said by the University of Otago’s Associate Professor William Levack or Professor Margreet Vissers responding to the original piece, as to why consultation with Māori is a fundamentally legitimate part of what, and how, we do things in New Zealand. These researchers and many others clearly know the Treaty has a rightful place in science and that consultation with tangata whenua – and other citizens – helps improve their work, and the relevance of their work to New Zealanders.

In my own experience as a researcher, consultation with Māori (and people with disabilities, given my area of research) has always lifted my game, challenged me to rethink some assumptions I have made (what can be more scientific than that!) and pushed me to do better work. Being challenged about why I have chosen a particular topic or methodology has actually been helpful in refining my focus, or building a better argument as to the meaningfulness of the project, or why I thought it mattered.

A recent documentary about Stan Walker illustrated what consultation or partnership can, and does, achieve between Māori and researchers. It was Stan’s whānau who stimulated some of our best minds to focus on just why so many people were dying of the same variant of cancer. The basic biomedical science that was done was stimulated by a question that mattered to Māori. As a result, more New Zealanders are surviving and the Health Research Council is proud to have supported that work.

The same thing is true in Huntington’s Chorea, sudden infant death syndrome, and should be true in many other health conditions where Māori have higher incidence, greater prevalence of difficulties, and worse outcomes.

Science is about people (both scientists and those who use their results); it is about values (most scientists go into the fields they do because they care, and are motivated to make a contribution and a difference); it is political (as is clear from the Stuff piece), and it is about debate and argument (ideally respectful) to move thinking, knowledge and a range of benefits forward.

I welcome the commitment of the scientists we support, and the challenge they provide us in thinking about how to ensure New Zealand health research is the very best it can be.

For the Health Research Council, a pillar of our strategy is to ensure our research investment improves equity and sees our indigenous people and their capacity in science strengthened. You cannot separate consultation with Māori from good science in New Zealand. They are connected and, in fact, depend upon one another.
Bold new research gets nod from HRC

News Article

Entering a multi-sensory virtual reality environment that measures reactions such as heart rate and sweat, might be the key to developing more effective preventive healthcare measures for New Zealanders.

Dr Melanie Tomintz, a researcher at the University of Canterbury, has just been awarded a $150,000 explorer grant from the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) to build such an environment, and to study the reactions of e-cigarette and tobacco smokers within it.

“A radical shift in thinking needs to be introduced to understand underlying causes of people’s subconscious behaviour,” says Dr Tomintz. Currently, health data is mainly collected by using surveys which can lead to bias and inaccurate representations of people’s actual behaviour, she claims.

Her exploratory study aims to measure people’s behavioural and psychophysiological reactions when exposed to virtual stimuli, such as tobacco, different flavours of e-cigarette liquids, and other conditions within a virtual world.

Dr Tomintz hopes the newly-collected behavioural data will be transformed into knowledge to support the development of innovative and personalised prevention and cessation support, and – in future – for planning healthier environments.

For her research, she’ll have access to an existing virtual lab, with two multisensory VR cage prototypes for multimodal feedback. But additional technology that exposes study participants to external stimuli, such as tobacco smoke and e-liquid flavours, will need to be acquired. Beyond this project, the virtual lab could be used to test people’s reactions to proposed future policies – a useful step before rolling out new treatments and policies, she says.

In another project being backed by the Health Research Council, a different and equally-novel approach will be used to address another pervasive behaviour: excessive ‘screen use’ by teenagers.

Screen use is now the main waking activity of New Zealand youth – or screenagers – and it’s a public health issue, asserts Dr Samantha Marsh from the University of Auckland.

Use of newer mobile devices and social media has been linked with unhappiness, loneliness, depression, risk-taking, isolation, exclusion and suicide. Yet, there are few tools available that effectively reduce screen-time in the long-term, she says.

Now, with her newly-gained explorer grant, Dr Marsh can design and test an intervention aimed at parents, to help them make decisions about reducing their teen’s screen time and to follow through on them.

Using the principles of neuroeconomics, which asserts that decision-making (particularly under risk and uncertainty) initiates in the emotion centre of the brain, Marsh will explore how to target emotion in the decision-making process, as opposed to relying on logic and rationalisation which has failed to address the issue.

Rather than focusing on outcomes (ie. ‘we are doing this to reduce screen time’), this technique influences decision-making by focusing on values, and the beliefs that inspire us. We might deeply value the idea of teens engaging with their environment or family, for example: excessive screen use merely represents a barrier or roadblock to this value,” explains Dr Marsh.

The ‘Start with WHY’ framework she proposes to use, has had success in the corporate world, but in the research environment is a radically different approach, she notes.

‘Different’ is part of the landscape when it comes to the Health Research Council’s explorer grants, says the crown agency’s chief executive, Professor Kath McPherson. The explorer grant scheme seeks to attract and fund transformative research ideas with the potential for major impact on healthcare.

In keeping with the innovative nature of these grants, the process of assessing applications also differs from the Health Research Council’s usual process of seeking external peer review. Instead, applications are short, anonymised, and reviewed by sub-panels within the explorer grant assessing committee, with emphasis placed on the ‘big picture’ and not researcher reputation.

“Our explorer grants aim to support scientists to do work that challenges established wisdom – to really go where no one has gone before and break new ground,” says Professor McPherson. “We know some of these studies will make a real difference to what we know, how we think, and eventually result in better outcomes for New Zealanders.”

A total of 10 explorer grants have today been announced, worth a combined value of $1.5 million. They cover a range of health disciplines and include an idea to use smallpox proteins to treat human inflammation, and the development of an all-new test for diagnosing prostate cancer.

See below for the full list of 2018 HRC explorer grant recipients, and to read lay summaries go to http://www.hrc.govt.nz/funding-opportunities/recipients and filter for ‘Researcher Initiated Proposals’, ‘Explorer Grants’ and ‘2018’.

2018 Explorer Grant recipients – full list

Dr Chris Baldi, University of Otago, Dunedin

A unique cellular mechanism for diabetic heart disease?

24 months, $150,000

Dr Paul Harris, University of Auckland

Pinpointing prostate cancer: A paradigm shift in diagnosis

24 months, $150,000

Ms Gayl Humphrey, University of Auckland

EngageBOT: Exploring chatbots for supporting patient engagement

24 months, $150,000

Professor Kurt Krause, University of Otago, Dunedin

Using smallpox proteins to treat human inflammation

24 months, $150,000

Dr Samantha Marsh, University of Auckland

'‘This is not an intervention, it’s a movement!’: reducing screen time in teens

24 months, $150,000

Professor Neil McNaughton, University of Otago, Dunedin

Developing and validating a novel site for mobile and unobtrusive EEG recording

24 months, $150,000

Associate Professor Anthony Phillips, University of Auckland

Is there a ‘fourth axis’ of vesicular communication?

24 months, $150,000

Dr Melanie Tomintz, University of Canterbury

Towards personalised digital health services for preventable health conditions

24 months, $150,000

Dr Ehsan Vaghefi, University of Auckland

Ocular laser bio-meter, fast and cheap early diagnosis of vision impairment

24 months, $150,000

Dr Paul Young, University of Auckland

A universal scaffold for multivalent vaccine development

24 months, $150,000
NZ research helps unlock better immune response to vaccines

Media Release

New Zealand researchers have developed a promising vaccine ‘adjuvant’ which could help the body mount a more effective immune response to vaccines, with potentially fewer side-effects.

The team has identified a molecule (the adjuvant) that binds strongly with a specific receptor found in normal, healthy cells. A combination of in vitro and in vivo studies (in mice) have shown that when added to a vaccine, alongside an antigen, this adjuvant can unlock a powerful cellular immune response to combat harmful bacteria and viruses.

Results to date suggest the adjuvant could play a role in the development of vaccines for chronic infections such as HIV, Group A Streptococcus, tuberculosis and S. pneumoniae infection (meningitis). It could also improve existing vaccines, by generating a better, longer-lasting immune response and reducing the need for booster shots.

The research, published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, was funded by the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) and the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Marsden Fund. Associate Professor Bridget Stocker from Victoria University of Wellington led the team, which included Associate Professor Mattie Timmer (VUW) and Professor Sho Yamasaki from Osaka, Japan, among others.

In 2013, Dr Stocker was awarded a $500,000 Sir Charles Hercus Research Fellowship by the HRC to explore ways to switch off dysfunctional immune cells to develop novel cancer therapies – the adjuvant finding is part of that wider research.

Dr Stocker says this adjuvant differs from others currently in use, in that it stimulates a specific type of T-cell response, instead of an antibody-only mediated response, which makes it useful in eliminating a number of particular pathogens.

That means, in theory, it could be used for preventative vaccination such as standard childhood vaccinations, as well as prophylactic vaccination for fighting cancer.

Research into the cancer side is still ongoing, but Dr Stocker notes “that is the bigger context of the work”. She plans to investigate the potential use of the adjuvant in combination with different antigens, such as those that come from outside the body – like bacteria – or those that develop within the body because cells are going “haywire”, she says.

A further plus with this adjuvant is that it uses a defined molecule to target a specific receptor, leading to a consistent and defined immune response.

“There’s been a shift in recent years in looking at whether more precise vaccines can be developed so there are fewer adverse side-effects, or less inflammation at the local site, says Dr Stocker.

“So rather than packing everything into a vaccine, including those parts of a pathogen that don’t facilitate the type of immune response that you want, you’re just adding what you need – very specific ingredients that do the job.”

The next step for Stocker’s team is to test the adjuvant in more specific disease settings by partnering with other collaborators.

“We have a patent on this compound, but we can only take it up to a certain point until you need a partner to help you take it to the next level. Any one group can only progress something so far,” she says.

She adds that without HRC funding, this research wouldn’t be possible. “Up until I got the Hercus Fellowship, I only had a job for six months, so I’m pretty certain that I wouldn’t have an independent scientific career, and a chance to make a difference, without this grant.”

HRC chief executive Professor Kath McPherson says one of the exciting things about this sort of work is its focus on improving our own bodies’ responses to vaccines.

“The field of immunology is developing incredibly fast with both better treatments for infectious diseases and cancer, and work like this – focusing on prevention. New Zealand scientists are at the forefront of some of this work and the HRC is proud to support them, and their work,” she says.