Charities Commission Registration CC22512

The new Health Research Council investment process

In 2009, the HRC proposed a new investment process and asked its stakeholders for feedback. NZORD provided a submission, a summary of which can be found here.

Following the consultation period, the new investment process was approved by the HRC board in mid-2009 and is being implemented in two stages, the first during the 2009-2010 funding round and the second during the 2010-2011 funding round.

The major changes from the previous system are:

1. The system is now two-tiered. The first tier involves an unlimited amount of relatively short applications, and the second tier involves a selection of invited full applications chosen from the first tier. Approximately half of the second tier applications will receive funding.
2. Investment priorities will now be indicated by a group of ‘Investment Signals’ released prior to each funding round. Applications must indicate which investment signal they will contribute towards and how. This was piloted in the 2009-2010 funding round, with one investment signal offered alongside the existing prioritisation process. The investment signal process will become fully operational in the 2010-2011 funding round.
3. Each investment signal will address one of a group of ‘Targeted Investment Streams’ (TISs), the development of which is still in progress. The final detail of these will be released in July 2010.
4. The total available budget for individual research projects has increased to $1,200,000 over three years ($400,000 max per year) and the total available budget for programmes of research has increased to $5,000,000 over five years.
5. The number of Emerging Researcher First Grants will double.

Information regarding this new investment process can be found at: http://www.hrc.govt.nz/root/pages_policy/New_Research_Investment_Process.html [from the Internet Archive]

A press release from the Health Research Council in June 2009 gives details of the results of the 2009 grant applications incorporating the new investment process outlined above.

Health-related research funding from the Marsden Fund

In 2009 the Marsden fund provided funding for 109 new research projects across 10 disciplinary areas. Details of these can be found at: http://marsden.rsnz.org/research/latest.php

The disciplinary areas that are most likely to fund health-related genetic research are the Biomedical Science panel and the Cellular, Molecular and Physiological Biology panel. The names of the projects these panels funded in 2009 can be found at that link.