Community Health

EIT’s Centre for Health and Wellness Research aims to advance health knowledge, clinical practice, health management and health education through high quality research. The Centre also creates opportunity to foster collaborative health research and create links between EIT and research partners.

Healthy Communities - Levi Armstrong’s journey to Master of Health Science

As a youngster EIT student Levi Armstrong (Ngati Kahungunu) could have gone down the wrong path in life, but he didn’t, and now he has just received top marks for his postgraduate degree through EIT.

Levi was recently notified that he had completed a Masters in Health Science with Distinction and he will graduate later this year. He says it has been an incredible journey and he is humbled to have had an opportunity that many rangatahi in his position often felt they did not have.

SUDI (sudden unexpected death in infancy)

Opinion by Professor David Tipene-Leach

We’ve spent billions of dollars fighting Covid-19, but unless we find a way to seriously address income disparity in New Zealand, then we are clearly saying that it’s okay to have 30 mostly brown babies from overcrowded homes die in their sleep each year.

Experienced academic leader and researcher leads EIT School of Nursing

 

Dr Denise Blanchard is the new Head of EIT’s School of Nursing.

EIT’s new Head of the School of Nursing is an experienced academic leader and researcher who is looking forward to growing and developing the institute’s nursing programmes in a changing tertiary landscape.

Dr Denise Blanchard, a registered nurse with a PhD in nursing from Victoria University of Wellington, started in the new role in April 2022.

 

EIT involved in Ngātahi project

A comprehensive three-year study, led by EIT’s two research professors, has evaluated a national pilot programme growing the skills of health professionals who work with vulnerable children and their families in Hawke’s Bay.

The research into the Ngātahi project ended in June last year and assessed how the project established a sustainable system for practitioners to identify the additional skills they believe they need, developed training programmes to address these needs and built relationships between workers in different organisations.

The Hawke’s Bay District Health Board (HBDHB) awarded EIT the contract to assess the impact of Ngātahi for the 500 professionals who work with vulnerable children and their families. The third and final Ngātahi report was published in June 2020.

EIT’s research team was led by Research Professors Kay Morris Matthews and David Tipene-Leach. Other members of the multi-disciplinary team were health researcher Dr Sally Abel; Dr Anne Hiha from the School of Education and Social Science; Chris Malcolm, a Mental Health Lecturer in the School of Health Science; social work programme coordinator Charlotte Chisnell and social work lecturer Karlin Austin, both of the School of Education and Social Science; and EIT researcher Pippa McKelvie-Sebileau. Kay and David both also sat on the Ngātahi Board of Governance as critical friends.

One Welfare (Professor Natalie Waran)

‘One Welfare’ covers a range of research and education topics including; Links between animal and human abuse (First Strike), the benefits of pet ownership for early childhood development, animal use in human therapy, animal welfare standards and food safety, human livelihoods and the welfare of working animals, animal welfare and antibiotic resistance and many more.

Meaningful research being done at the EIT Institute of Sport and Health (EIT ISH)

Hockey star, Shea McAleese, uses EIT’s facilities to prepare for Olympics

EIT staff and students have conducted meaningful research at the EIT Institute of Sport and Health (EIT ISH) since it opened its doors in 2019 and the School of Health and Sport Science has made it a goal to increase the community projects undertaken there.

The Institute has been built on the grounds of the Hawke’s Bay Regional Sports Park in Hastings as a venture to enhance community participation in exercise and as a high-performance centre. Run by the Hawke’s Bay Community Fitness Centre Trust, the Institute is used by different groups each week, while EIT also uses teaching facilities and conducts research projects there.

Havelock North water supply contamination

Dr Anita Jagroop-Dearing is a senior academic at EIT, International Postgraduate Programme Coordinator in Health Science and Nursing and Chair of the Health Research Committee.

PATU TM Community Gyms

PATU TM is a health and fitness programme developed by and for Māori. When Levi Armstrong graduated with a Bachelor of Sport and Recreation from EIT, he recognised the need for Māori specific-interventions to help improve physical activity levels and health outcomes for Ngāti Kahungunu. In response he created PATU© , a group exercise initiative that targets physical inactivity and sedentary behaviours associated with obesity by combining a high intensity fitness regime and healthy lifestyle education with te reo me ōna tikanga Māori.