Newsletter Summer 2011

As the year draws to a close it seems timely to reflect on the last 12 months and to acknowledge some of the significant achievements since the Growing Up in New Zealand journey began. Growing Up in New Zealand was officially launched in April 2008 following five years of development. Approximately 7,000 children born between 25 April 2009 and 25 March 2010, joined the study from within the Auckland, Counties-Manukau and Waikato DHB regions. Since the completion of the recruitment phase we have collected information from our families on a number of occasions and in 2010 we released our first report based on the antenatal interviews. It was exciting to see the incredible diversity of all our families and to begin to understand what makes Growing Up in New Zealand so special. We also appreciated hearing their hopes and dreams for their children. These showed that while we are a country of many backgrounds we are universally joined by a desire for our children to be happy and healthy, and to grow up in a society that acknowledges their strengths and differences. Already these results have provided important information for our stakeholders, including policy makers, and will provide a solid platform against which to measure future results.

The next major report is due in early 2012. This report will take us beyond pregnancy and detail the first nine months of our children's life. We will describe what our parents said when their children were nine months old, and for the first time we will start to put together information that has been collected over time, allowing an early insight into the developmental pathways of children in New Zealand. We will also be able to see whether the intentions our parents had for their children were realised or not after their children were born (such as those regarding taking leave from work and breastfeeding).

We are currently interviewing our parents now that our children are two years old. These interviews are the third face-to-face data collection wave since the study began. They started in May 2011 and will run until May 2012. This data collection wave represents the first direct interaction between our interviewers and our children and I know the interview teams are really enjoying meeting up with our families again.

Central to Growing Up in New Zealand is the relationship we have with our families. Their participation today and into the future is vital to the study and we appreciate their continued generosity and commitment.

I look forward to sharing the next results from Growing Up in New Zealand with in early 2012.

With kind regards,

Dr Susan Morton

Associate Professor Cameron Grant is an Associate Director of Growing Up in New Zealand and the study's Health and Wellbeing domain leader. Cameron is a paediatrician at Starship Children's Hospital and an Associate Professor at The University of Auckland. His research focuses on improving health in early childhood. Cameron's research interests include child health, respiratory infections in young children and improving child health through immunisation and improved nutrition.

Growing Up in New Zealand allows Cameron to look at these issues in the broader context of life for families and through the study gain a much better appreciation of the relative contribution of aspects of child development to improved health over time. Cameron cites an excellent design and leadership as key strengths of the study.

"The design has allowed for the incredible diversity of New Zealand families to participate in a project which will shape our countries future. Two key features of Growing Up in New Zealand are that we enrolled during pregnancy and we enrolled partners at the beginning. The leadership within the study has been focused from the beginning on improving child health and includes a team of experts dedicated to ensuring positive outcomes for New Zealand children."

"We know it is a very cost effective design with long term health benefits. In a challenging financial climate a project such as Growing Up in New Zealand can seem like a luxury, when in fact it is a necessity."

Using pneumonia as an example Cameron explains how Growing Up in New Zealand provides him with opportunities to improve child health. As a paediatrician Cameron cares for many children each year diagnosed with pneumonia. He acknowledges there is little he can do to change the course of their illness which is usually well established by the time they are admitted to hospital.

"If I only worked as a clinician, although I would provide great care to individual children, in 20 years time the knowledge I had gained would not have been used to help reduce the number of children each year with pneumonia that was so severe that hospital care was necessary. Growing Up in New Zealand provides me with the opportunity to apply all of the lessons learnt from caring for sick children to preventing children getting pneumonia and needing to be hospitalised."

Image: Associate Professor Cameron Grant.