Cure Kids (New Zealand)
Cure Kids is New Zealand’s largest non-government funder of child health research. They recognise the need to introduce targeted interventions to prevent diseases, to care for and treat children and young people who are ill, and to get them back to good health as soon as possible to minimise long-term impact on their physical and social development, educational achievement, and participation in society. Transforming the health of children is fundamental to ensuring a healthy future for all. These efforts must be targeted at those who need it the most.
In 2022/2023, the Eurofins Foundation is contributing to the Healthy Weight Project.
Child obesity has far-reaching health, social and economic implications across diverse socioeconomic status and geographical locations around the world and disproportionately impacts disadvantaged populations. In New Zealand, approximately three in ten 2–14-year-olds are overweight or obese, with much greater rates amongst Māori and Pacifica children and young people.
However, the existing national sources of data used to monitor growth among children and youth are fragmented, do not contain information for 0-2-year-olds, have big gaps for school-aged children, and are mostly aggregated at the national level. This means that New Zealand lacks group-specific information by age, region and socio-demographics on prevalence and determinants of healthy weight in 0-19-year-olds.
This information is crucial if equitable improvements are to be achieved. This project aims to scope the creation of an integrated monitoring platform for tracking growth trajectories nationally and regionally for 0-19-year-olds. Such a system will:
- Monitor progress on children’s growth and on reducing obesity and related inequities;
- Identify sub-populations of higher need;
- Provide the evaluation data for population interventions to maintain healthy weight;
- Inform regional actions to tackle unhealthy.
This project contributes to the following United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals
