Faculty awarded two HRC grants
Two HRC Grants have been awarded to researchers in the Wellington Faculty of Health—Te Wāhanga Tātai Hauora whose projects explore safe and equitable assisted dying, and gaps in mental health and addiction services for rainbow communities.
Developing a new assisted dying research network and identifying where service gaps exist in order to improve health equity for rainbow communities are two projects in the School of Health being funded by the Health Research Council (HRC).
HRC grants are awarded throughout the year to research that can improve the health and wellbeing of all New Zealanders.
Dr Jessica Young, postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Health, received a grant for her research project entitled ‘A new research agenda to support safe and accessible assisted dying in Aotearoa’.
Dr Young says the End of Life Choice Act (2019), which began on 7 November 2021, heralded a paradigm shift in end-of-life care in New Zealand Aotearoa. While providing new choices for people with a terminal illness, the implementation of assisted dying (AD) will create new challenges for patients, whānau, health practitioners and the entire health system, she says.
“Timely and high-quality research is imperative to ensure AD is safe, accessible, and available equitably."
Dr Young says the grant will help establish a new AD research network, collaboratively identify key research priorities with input from stakeholders, and develop funding applications to address these priorities. These will likely include effective monitoring, regulatory review of the AD system, development of policy and clinical guidelines, and patient and whānau information.
“I’m excited to bring assisted dying scholars together to start identifying the research questions that we’ll need answering, as assisted dying is implemented and provided to terminally ill New Zealanders who are suffering at the end of life.”
The grant is a collaboration between Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington and the University of Otago, the University of Auckland, University of Canterbury and Queensland University of Technology. The team is comprised of Dr Jessica Young, Dr Jeanne Snelling, Ms Leanne Manson, Dr Richard Egan, Dr Janine Winters, Professor Ben White, Professor Lindy Willmott, Dr Gary Cheung, Dr Jackie Robinson, and Dr Te Hurinui Karaka-Clarke.
Dr Young is also member of the Support and Consultation for End of Life in New Zealand (SCENZ) Group, a statutory group assisting the implementation of End of Life Choice Act (2019).
Dr George Parker, Lecturer in Health Service Delivery in the School of Health, has also received a grant for their research entitled ‘Gaps analysis of mental health and addiction services for rainbow communities’. Rainbow communities include people with a diverse sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics (SOGIESC).
Dr Parker says this is an exciting and timely opportunity for collaboration between rainbow community advocates and researchers to identify new areas for investment and service development in mental health and addiction services.
“Rainbow communities have been recognised as an underserved population in mental health and addiction services and we hold expert knowledge within our communities about what is needed to address this. This project will help harness this knowledge to contribute towards ongoing progress in health equity for rainbow communities.”
Dr Parker says people with a diverse sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics experience poorer mental health and a higher risk of experiencing distress, addiction, and suicide in Aotearoa New Zealand, linked to social discrimination.
“The quality of mental health and addiction services play a critical role in these inequities yet, in general, these services fail to achieve equitable outcomes for this population. The Government has provided targeted nationwide funding to services that provide mental health support to Rainbow young people this year.”
Dr Parker says the findings from this research will lead to further research to investigate how mental health and addiction service investment can contribute to improved health equity for rainbow (SOGIESC-diverse) communities.
