Pioneering New Zealand research based on the internationally-renowned continuing study of 1037 children born in Dunedin in the early 1970s will continue after the project received more than $6 million in grants.

The major health and development study was one of 52 health research projects that received a total of $60 million in funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC).

The Dunedin Study, led by University of Otago Department of Psychology Professor Richie Poulton, will examine ageing processes of the study’s participants to inform early intervention strategies.

The research, conducted out of the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Research Unit (DMHDRU), will use biomarker data collected from the same 1000 people at ages 26, 32, 38, and 45 to track the pace of their biological ageing.

The project will investigate why some people age faster or slower than their age-peers, with the findings expected to support interventions to slow ageing, prevent age-related diseases, and enhance preparedness for wellbeing in later life.

Another research project will examine ways to reduce fatigue in hospital-based nurses in a bid to improve patient safety coupled with the health, safety, quality of life and retention of nurses.

Professor Philippa Gander, director of the Sleep/Wake Research Centre at Massey University, said the project will assist District Health Boards (DHBs) and nurses to manage shift work and fatigue - a cause of workplace hazards, after receiving more than $890,000 in funding.

“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,” she said.

“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.”

The New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) will work with Dr Gander as part of the three-year research project.

NZNO principal researcher Dr Léonie Walker said the research is the first of its kind in New Zealand and follows on from Dr Gander’s previous research which revolutionised the way airlines and pilots worked together to reduce the risks of fatigue.

“The potential for this collaborative research to create positive change is great,” she said.

“The opportunity to create safer and healthier work environments for nurses and other shift workers will create flow-on benefits for patients and employers.”

Associate Professor Beverley Lawton has received a $4.7 million grant to assist young pregnant Māori women and their children improve their health and wellbeing as part of a five-year research program.

Director of the Women’s Health Research Centre at the University of Otago, Dr Lawton is lead researcher on the Whānau Manaaki program, which will investigate the health care delivery system and the structural determinants of health, such as housing, racism, transport, income and education, that impact on the health of Māori women, their babies and whānau.

In other funded projects, University of Otago senior lecturer Dr Cameron Lacey will investigate Māori and bipolar disorder while Māori neuropsychologist Dr Margaret Dudley, of the University of Auckland, will examine a Māori approach to the assessment and management of dementia.