Recommendations

1. Health research be enshrined as a key enabler of the best possible health outcomes in any redesign of New Zealand’s health and disability system.

2. The agencies responsible for implementing the New Zealand Health Research Strategy (Ministry of Health, MBIE and the Ministry of Health) be required and fully resourced to enable them to achieve implementation by 2027

3. The Ministry of Health through its contracting and commissioning processes mandates health and medical research as a core requirement of all publicly funded health service providers

4. Government ringfenced investment in health research be increased by 16.7% per year through to 2027 in order to achieve a target of 2.4% of publicly funded health service delivery costs within the time frame of the New Zealand Health Research Strategy.

5. All recommendations arising from the review of the New Zealand Health and Disability System be evidentially based and referenced, or if evidence is unavailable, be subject to a clearly defined and time-framed post implementation review process

6. Treasury be tasked with quantifying the financial returns on government ringfenced health research investment in order to inform future health research funding decisions locally, inform health research investment strategies nationally, and to give the New Zealand public confidence that health research is impacting positively on health care costs

7. The Health and Disability System Review panel read Health Research Council (HRC) publication Research to Action: Improving the lives of New Zealanders through health research, as a companion document to this submission0F1

Read the full submission here