Dr Chey Dearing, a Principal Academic Staff Member (PASM) in EIT’s School of Nursing, has led research that shows that tthousands of New Zealanders, especially people of Māori ,Pacific, or Asian ethnicity are not getting proper bowel cancer screening.

Thousands of New Zealanders, especially people of Māori ,Pacific, or Asian ethnicity are not getting proper bowel cancer screening, EIT-led research has found.

The new research, led by Dr Chey Dearing, a Principal Academic Staff Member (PASM) in EIT’s School of Nursing, shows that in ten years more than 7,000 eligible people tried but failed, due to an error with the bowel cancer screening test or it not being done properly.

The research has just been published in the New Zealand Medical Journal with Dr Dearing as the lead author. The article is entitled Attempt to engage, yet failure to obtain successful bowel cancer screening: more likely in Māori, Pacific peoples, Asians, men and high deprivation areas. Other authors are Louise O’Connor, Gastroenterology Nurse, Gastroenterology Department, Hawke’s Bay Fallen Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital; Georgia C Dearing, Health Science Student, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, The University of Auckland; and Bernard McEntee, Consultant General Surgeon, Gastroenterology Department, Hawke’s Bay Fallen Soldiers’ Memorial Hospital.

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’ 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.

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.