About the Health Promotion and Policy Research Unit (HePPRU)
The Health Promotion and Policy Research Unit (HePPRU) aims to foster excellence in research in health promotion and public health policy. HePPRU works in collaboration with policy-makers and policy advocates to advance the good health of the peoples of Aotearoa/New Zealand through independent, critical and innovative research, teaching, and community service. The multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary team within HePPRU has expertise in qualitative and quantitative research methods.
The Unit has a particular emphasis on nutrition, tobacco and equity-focused research and members of HePPRU are leading and contributing a programme of research which will inform health promotion and public health policy development and advocacy. The Unit is committed to Treaty-based research and uses the Ottawa Charter as a working framework.
Objectives of HePPRU are to:
- Facilitate a strategic approach to health promotion and public health policy research
- Promote an equity-based approach to research in this area
- Foster collaborative policy-orientated research within and outside of HePPRU
- Increase the amount and quality of research in this arena.
Key areas of research interest, HePPRU:
The areas of research interest are varied and evolving, and currently include the following:
- Effective policy interventions to promote healthy eating and healthy action
- The environmental influences on food and nutrition related behaviours
- The politics of food and nutrition
- Tackling inequalities through health promotion and public health policy
- Research to inform the development of key current tobacco control policies in New Zealand such as smoke-free environments, taxation, and point of sale
- Denormalisation of the tobacco industry and tobacco industry, product and market regulation
- Tobacco endgames options
Location and personnel, HePPRU:
HePPRU brings together health promotion and public health policy researchers working at the University of Otago, Wellington. We also work closely with researchers in other University of Otago sites, at other universities inside and outside of New Zealand, and with staff from other agencies involved with health promotion and policy.
Current collaborators include:
Within New Zealand:
- Action on Smoking and Health
- Auckland Tobacco Control Research Centre & Clinical Trials Research Unit, School of Population Health, Population Health, University of Auckland
- Cancer Society of New Zealand
- Health Sponsorship Council
- Public Health Intelligence (Ministry of Health)
- Quigley and Watts Ltd
- Te Hotu Manawa Māori
- Te Reo Marama
- The Family Centre
- The Quit Group
- Whakauae Research Services
International:
- Faculty of Health Sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia
- Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, USA
- The Cancer Council Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
- University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
- Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia