On 26th April it was announced that the the Final Health and Disability System Review Report has been completed and will be presented to the Government when they request it.

The interim report gave no recognition of the role of health research in improving New Zealand’s health and disability system (despite NZHR’s detailed submission during the consultation phase that it should do so). It didn’t reference the government’s own Health Research Strategy in its 468 footnotes. Furthermore, NZHR was not acknowledged or further consulted in the development of the final report (again, despite having responded to the interim report expressing our concerns).

New Zealanders for Health Research will therefore be taking a very keen interest in the final report’s contents when it is publicly released.