Project Grants

We will test novel co-designed approaches to ameliorate Sweet Pressure in high-risk communities.
Building on research opportunities developed during the Sweet Pressure IRM, including community-led initiatives, we propose to run a series of parallel projects to improve Sweet Pressure identification & management in Māori and Pacific communities.

Project 1: Identifying “sweet pressure” patient characteristics associated with cardiovascular risk prediction and treatment efficacy in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Project 2: Complete the first-ever study of associations between inflammatory biomarkers, genetic parameters and cardiometabolic risk factors, comparing Māori and Pacific peoples with other ethnicities in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Project 3: Evaluate continuous glucose monitoring as a tool to delay or reverse diabetes in a community setting.

Project 4: Validate, expand and disseminate our model of STEM education as a vector for facilitating lifestyle change in Pacific communities.

These complementary projects focus on developing and validating targeted, personalised lifestyle interventions for Sweet Pressure, leveraging our team's expertise in epidemiology, biomarkers/genetics, continuous glucose monitoring, and community-based lifestyle (nutrition and education) interventions.

We will use holistic breathing manipulations to access the cardiovascular system in those with elevated anxiety at risk of developing CVD, using Mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) of the breath (te hā) to improve Hauora. While various breathwork techniques can effectively reduce anxiety22, we will specifically test their efficacy in improving cardiovascular health indicators. We hypothesise that breathing training will be effective relieving anxiety and reinstating physiological autonomic balance.

Aims

1. Investigate early indicators of compromised cardiovascular function with elevated anxiety.
2. Assess the ability of non-invasive, accessible autonomic-focussed breathing interventions to simultaneously improve heart and mental health parameters over the course of a 12-week programme.

This project aims to strengthen local coordination of public-health interventions and active surveillance systems so that real-time data directly guide prevention efforts, enabling more targeted and equitable interventions for Pacific communities. By co-designing culturally grounded approaches to sore-throat management, access, referral, and follow-up with Pacific providers and communities, including the Pacific Health Service Hutt Valley (PHSHV) - the project connects national public-health guidelines with their local implementation to make the system function as a coordinated whole. 

It will evaluate how the 2024 Communicable Disease Manual and 2024 Heart Foundation ARF/RHD guidelines are being implemented in the Hutt Valley and how embedding these national standards within coordinated local systems, supported by linked public health, primary and community care, and hospital data, evaluation, can improve effectiveness and consistency compared with top-down national delivery models. Strengthened local–national feedback loops will enhance programme accountability and inform equitable resource allocation.

Pacific leadership is central throughout implementation, ensuring that interventions are culturally appropriate, community-driven, and sustainable. The project will also build Pacific workforce capacity in health-system coordination, data literacy, and evaluation. It will help PHSHV transition from an ad-hoc safety-net role to a more established leadership role in both providing and coordinating ARF prevention across the Hutt Valley. The resulting model will provide a tested, scalable framework for implementing national ARF prevention strategies in other high-risk regions across Aotearoa New Zealand.

This project will support three people through their doctoral studies.

This project, founded on the adage that we are a product of our environment, seeks to unlock the power of indigenous ways of knowing and interacting with the environment for heart health equity. First, our heart health and approach to its prevention and management reflects the dominant cultural context, dominated as it is by western values, knowledge and systems. These world views regard people and their health as autonomous individuals who are independent from the wider environment. Second, in contrast, according to Te Ao Māori, we are literally of the environment – yet we behave as though we are not. The consequences of this disregard for the environmental underpinnings of heart health have been devastating for Māori and Pacific peoples and will be for future generations. This proposed IRM will therefore, draw on the strength of a range of knowledges - social theory, Te Ao Māori (via Tiwaiwaka) and physiology (homeostasis and adaptation) to investigate how best to intervene in ways that prevent the perpetuation of cardiotoxic environments and thereby improve the prospects for future intergenerational heart health equity.

Findings

The interdisciplinary research team identified categories that affect heart health and shape the heart-health environment for current and future generations (eg, nutritional factors, environmental factors, treatment, education, technological and structural factors). The western emphasis is overwhelmingly on medical and biological factors and treatment and is disconnected from nature. In contrast, Te Ao Māori emphasises whenua and mauri, connection to whenua and whānau, living a full life but accepting its limits, and with clear concern for future generations and non-human life. 

The researchers made several recommendations to address their findings including resource allocation: 

• placing an emphasis on intergenerational heart health in new research
• researchers and clinicians acting as a powerful voice in acknowledging the nature and gravity of the current heart health environment and its generational inequity
• honouring te Tiriti o Waitangi in our motu and promote Indigenous rights internationally
• adopting and promoting tangible, well-evidenced, co-beneficial strategies for inter-generational heart health such as the prioritisation of Mediterranean diets and active transport.