Research interests
Our department conducts research in a range of epidemiological and biostatistics fields. Click on the names of individual researchers to find out more about their interests and publications.
Cancer epidemiology
Our objective is to contribute to lowering the impact of cancer in New Zealand. Thus we can prevent cancer, diagnose it earlier, treat it better, support individuals and families affected by it, and reduce the death rates. We work with clinical experts and national groups, and currently study aspects of breast, colorectal, lung, skin, and other cancers to address key issues.
Food policies and environments
We research and monitor food policies and food environments related to obesity and non-communicable diseases. This includes studies on food prices, labelling, marketing, and trade and investment. Our community-based approaches to improving children’s nutrition in Hawke’s Bay use systems science and Mātauranga Māori approaches.
Global Health
Our research is committed to improving the health of the most vulnerable populations in our Pacific region and globally. We’re doing this through research, training, education and collaboration.
We are part of INFORMAS, a global network of public-interest organisations and researchers that aims to monitor, benchmark and support public and private sector actions to increase healthy food environments and reduce obesity and NCDs and their related inequalities.
Health Geography and Deprivation in New Zealand
Health Geography includes themes such as health inequalities and how social and physical environments shape human health. Deprivation is defined as a lack of the types of diet, clothing, housing and environmental, educational, working and social conditions, activities and facilities which are customary. This research has led to the development of online tools such as the New Zealand Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), the Older Person’s Index of Multiple Deprivation (OPIMD) and the Auckland Regional Vascular Atlas (ARVA).
Injury and Trauma
Our research explores road traffic injury and disability; the burden of death, disease and disability related to alcohol consumption in New Zealand; and the relative impact of exposures from the beginning through to the end of life on health.
Sustainability and Planetary Health
Planetary Health explores the connections between human health and the health of ecosystems and environments.
Our air pollution and health research investigates the impact of an urban environment on the health and well-being of urban residents.
Transport and health
Our research investigates how we can use bikes to improve safety, make cities better places to live in, and promote the health of citizens. Our collaborative project, The Future of the Bike, explores how we can leverage the power of the bicycle to address the emerging challenges of urbanisation.
Vascular health
We seek to predict vascular risk more accurately, map variation in vascular risk to determine in whom, where and when in the continuum of care disparities occur, and model what interventions are likely to have the greatest impact on improving vascular outcomes.
Our project 'Vascular informatics using epidemiology and the web (VIEW), represents a large-scale, health informatics initiative linking anonymised individual data from multiple datasets, on several million New Zealanders.
Another project, Effective Practice, Informatics and Quality Improvement (EPIQ), is focused around PREDICT, a web-based platform for providing ‘moment of care’ evidence-based decision support practitioners for getting research into practice.
Asian and ethnic minority youth health
Our research seeks to understand ‘insider’ lived experiences of Asian, Middle Eastern, Latin American and African youth to stimulate health promoting environments where all young people can thrive and flourish as citizens of Aotearoa.