$1.5m to foster Māori health research

$1.5m to foster Māori health research

Today the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) announced $1.5 million in funding to emerging Māori health researchers as part of its 2014 Career Development Awards programme.

One of the major awards, the HRC’s Eru Pomare Postdoctoral Fellowship, has gone to Dr Jason Gurney (Ngāpuhi) from the University of Otago, Wellington. Dr Gurney will use his funding to research why Māori men have significantly higher rates of testicular cancer than non-Māori men.

In 2012/2013, Dr Gurney led a research team that discovered ethnic inequalities in the rates of undescended testis, one of the well-known risk factors for testicular cancer – the most common cancer to affect young men between 15 and 40 years of age. His fellowship will build on this work to better understand what’s driving the higher rates of both undescended testis and testicular cancer in Māori men. It will include the first pilot case-control study on testicular cancer in New Zealand.

Clinical psychiatrist Dr Hinemoa Elder (Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Kuri, Te Rarawa, Ngāpuhi) of Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi has also received the prestigious HRC Eru Pomare Postdoctoral Fellowship to improve the rehabilitation of young Māori (under 24 years old) who have sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI).

TBI in children and adolescents is a serious health problem both in New Zealand and abroad. Recent figures showed the rates of TBI were 1200 per 100,000 persons for Māori compared with 975 per 100,000 persons for New Zealand Europeans.

Dr Elder is one of only a very small number of child and adult psychiatrists with experience working with Māori whānau in the area of TBI. For this fellowship she will use Te Ao Māori (the Māori world view) to develop and test a quantitative questionnaire that will measure the cultural rehabilitation needs of young Māori with a TBI. Dr Elder will also use a new approach she’s developed, Te Waka Oranga, to bring together professional and whānau knowledge in the context of TBI rehabilitation.

Speech-language therapist Dr Karen McLellan (Ngaiterangi, Whakatōhea) recently completed her PhD at The University of Auckland on the experiences of Māori with aphasia – a language disorder following a stroke. She will now use her HRC Eru Pomare Postdoctoral Fellowship to design and create an intervention programme for speech-language therapists working with Māori who have stroke-related communication disorders.

In addition to these three awards, the HRC has granted another 16 Māori Health Research Career Development Awards, including PhD scholarships, three Master’s scholarships, eight summer studentships and three training awards.

“These awards are a chance for some of New Zealand’s talented emerging Māori health researchers to partner with other academics, clinicians and community stakeholders to improve the health of Māori and non-Māori alike,” says HRC Chief Executive Dr Robin Olds.

See below for a list of all the 2014 HRC Career Development Award recipients (Māori health research). You can also check out www.hrc.govt.nz/funding-opportunities/recipients.

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