Institute plans to lift primary health care

By SIMON COLLINS science reporter


Rotorua's Waiariki Institute of Technology has launched an ambitious plan to train more primary health care workers to help people to stay healthy.

The institute wants to raise $5.5 million from businesses and trusts, and hopes for the same in matching Government funding, to build an $11 million Centre for Community Health and Wellness Education.

It is one of the smallest of 11 applications from tertiary education institutions to the Government's new Partnerships for Excellence scheme, which gave $25 million to Auckland University's new business school.

Auckland University has put in four of the new applications - for its new School of Population Health at Tamaki, an Institute of Innovation in Biotechnology, doubling the size of the Leigh marine laboratory, and schemes to help young people from groups under-represented at university.

Other applications propose researching forestry in Rotorua and Auckland, coastal issues in Tauranga, horses in Cambridge, engineering in New Plymouth, international trade and law in Wellington and physical sciences in Christchurch.

The Government has set no budget limit on the proposals because they will be funded out of capital rather than current spending, with matching private-sector funds.

The Tertiary Education Commission is due to decide on grants in March.

Waiariki chief executive Dr Reynold Macpherson said the primary health centre's goal was "to enable people to join the economy and to transform their lives".

"Health is a major and systemic impediment to people in our rohe [district] joining the economy," he said.

Local district health boards and Maori health providers could not find the nurses and primary health care workers that they needed to fight growing problems of diabetes, obesity, heart and kidney diseases and drug and alcohol abuse.

The new centre would aim to double student numbers in nursing, primary health care and sport from 287 at present to 593 by 2006.

The proposal includes a primary health care clinic and a "wellness clinic" on Waiariki's Rotorua campus to provide practical experience for students.

"At the moment they have to go out to hospitals and health providers. Some are small and broke and it's very difficult for them to take students," Dr Macpherson said.

One tiny rural mental health group with just three volunteers has sent in a $100 koha (donation) for the new centre. "When small groups like that give us koha, it gives us an indication of how much this is needed," Dr Macpherson said.

Massey University nursing lecturer Stephen Neville, who chairs the College of Nurses Aotearoa, said he was not aware of any other institutes that were focusing so heavily on primary health care training.

He said there was an international shortage of nurses, with many New Zealand-trained nurses being lured overseas by higher pay.



Proposed Partnerships for Excellence

Canterbury University: seeking $55 million for information technology, medical imaging and astronomy.

Auckland University: $15 million for School of Population Health at Tamaki.

Auckland University: $10 million for Institute for Innovation in Biotechnology.

Auckland University: $7.7 million for Star Path, mentoring and outreach schemes for groups under-represented at university.

Forest Industries Training: $7.5 million for training and research at Auckland University and Waiariki Institute of Technology, Rotorua.

Western Institute of Technology at Taranaki: $7 million for International Centre for Innovation and Applied Research in Engineering.

Waikato University: $6 million for Coastal Marine Research Institute in Tauranga.

Waiariki Institute of Technology: $5.5 million for Centre for Community Health and Wellness Education in Rotorua.

Victoria University: $5 million-plus for Asia-Pacific Centre for International Governance, Law and Trade in Wellington.

Massey University: $5 million for Equine Research Institute at Cambridge.

Auckland University: $5 million for South Pacific Institute of Marine Science at Leigh.