Charity announces travel scholarships

Jessie Hutchings and Dr Kelly Garton are the recipients of this year’s Sir John Logan Campbell Medical Trust grants, established to support researchers with travel that will benefit healthcare in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Jessie, a doctoral candidate in the School of Pharmacy, receives $25,300 to attend the launch in Geneva of the World Health Organization (WHO) report on the social determinants of health equity. She will also support the WHO in disseminating the findings as well as supporting follow-up, evaluation and reporting, in Finland.

Dr Kelly Garton, a senior research fellow in the School of Population Health, receives $24,700 to visit the University of Sao Paulo (USP) Center for Epidemiological Research in Nutrition and Health (NUPENS).

Kelly will work with researchers there to study links between ultra-processed food (UPF) consumption and heart disease. She will combine these findings with data collected in the first year of her Heart Foundation fellowship on the trends in availability and consumption of ultra-processed food in Aotearoa.

The aim is to explore potential links with the recent flattening and possible reversal of the decline in cardiovascular disease seen in Aotearoa since the1960s.

Completing this analysis and preparing a publication manuscript, co-authored by the NUPENS researchers, will be Kelly’s primary goal.

A secondary objective will be to interview Brazilian policy officials regarding technical considerations when designing public health nutrition policies to curb production and consumption of UPF and encourage consumption of healthier foods. This will provide a basis for policy recommendations in Aotearoa.

Sir John Logan Campbell Trust trustee Adrienne Young-Cooper says the 21 applicants for this year’s awards were of a very high calibre, making the decision to determine the final recipients very challenging.

"We chose Jessie and Kelly because both of their proposals demonstrated a definite pathway to benefitting health research and the provision of health in Aotearoa New Zealand, and they both clearly explained how their own pathways would be strengthened because of the fellowship.

"We are very pleased that so many young medical students were able to try for this fellowship and we encourage them to try again next year. That the quality of all the applications was so high, is very gratifying and we are glad to be able to assist students to achieve their goals ."

The grants have been revised after a Covid-related break with sustainability in mind. Read more.

• Read more about Sir John Logan Campbell's legacy of giving: https://cornwallpark.co.nz/our-giving