The Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) today announced funding for a record 52 projects worth a combined total of $60 million – a 74 per cent dollar increase from last year.
HRC Chief Executive Professor Kath McPherson says that the Government’s $97 million investment boost for health research, which was revealed in last month’s Budget, is a major reason for this year’s record number of funded projects.
“We’ve got such a wealth of talented health researchers here in New Zealand that every year we get many more exceptionally high quality applications than we’re able to fund. This significant increase in investment has meant it was possible for the HRC to fund 19 more projects this year compared with 2015. This is hugely exciting as these diverse projects have the potential to vastly improve our health system and the health of New Zealanders.”
Two of these newly funded projects are putting the spotlight on hazards in New Zealand’s workplaces.
In the aftermath of the catastrophic Pike River Mine explosion, New Zealand’s workplace health and safety record has come under scrutiny. Every year one in 10 workers is injured at work in New Zealand. Most recent estimates indicate that more than 100,000 workers require time off work, 12,000 are permanently disabled, and 105 are killed every year from work-related injuries.
Otago University researcher Dr Rebbecca Lilley will use her HRC project funding to address a deficit in current information on work-related fatal injuries to New Zealand workers, which is a significant barrier to reducing workplace deaths.
“The reasons for New Zealand’s poor performance are highly debated, and in-depth analyses to inform this debate is limited by a dearth of detailed work-related fatal injury data,” says Dr Lilley.
Her research will address the need for comprehensive and informative fatal injury data by using coronial files – records of coronial inquests undertaken in response to sudden, unexpected fatality events – with comprehensive capture of work fatalities to identify targets for policy, interventions for prevention, and allow benchmarking of safety performance.
Professor Philippa Gander, Director of the Sleep/Wake Research Centre at Massey University, has a new HRC project grant that aims to reduce fatigue among hospital-based nurses, thereby improving patient safety and the health, safety, quality of life, and retention of nurses.
“District health boards currently rely primarily on the traditional approach to managing fatigue, which is to limit maximum work hours and minimum breaks within and between work periods, by industrial agreement,” says Professor Gander.
“However, workplace fatigue is now understood to be caused primarily by sleep loss, extended wakefulness, working and sleeping at suboptimal times in the circadian body clock cycle, and workload – both mental and physical. Limits on work hours don’t adequately address this combination of causes of fatigue.”
Professor Gander says the project will help DHBs and nurses to manage shift work and fatigue as a cause of workplace hazards under the Health and Safety at Work Act (2015). This Act recently came into effect and is introducing increased enforcement and larger penalties for breaches.
For the full list of 2016 HRC project recipients, go to our research repository and filter for ‘Researcher Initiated Proposals,’ ‘Projects’ and ‘2016’.