A $200,000 Health Research Council grant will enable University of Otago Prof Barry Taylor to lead ''urgently-needed'' research into the use of ''pepi-pod'' bassinets, intended to cut New Zealand's high rate of Sudden Unexpected Death in Infancy (Sudi).
Prof Taylor, who heads the pediatrics and child health section in the Otago University department of women's and children's health, welcomed the recently-announced funding.
This is one of four research partnership projects throughout the country, involving HRC grants amounting to more than $750,000, recently announced by the research council.
Through these projects, clinicians and researchers weretackling ''major health challenges'', the HRC said.
Prof Taylor said the $200,000 would support an extension of earlier work involving Sudi, with which he was also closely involved.
That work, funded by a $1.2 million HRC grant, had partlybeen assessing the effectiveness of wahakura, woven baby beds made from flax and designed to protect babies by providing a safe sleeping space on an adult bed.
This baby bed initiative originated as an indigenous response to the high rates of Sudi (previously known as cot death) for Maori and the risks of co-sleeping with infants.
Prof Taylor said the latest HRC funding would be used to help investigate whether placing infants in a pepi-pod, a plastic container with a fitted mattress, for overnight sleep was a safe way of decreasing New Zealand's internationally high Sudi rate.
The research will use infra-red video and measure heart rate, blood oxygen levels and body temperature.
''The results will provide urgently needed evidence to support, or otherwise, the current plans that are being implemented by many district health boards,'' Prof Taylor said.
He was again working closely with Dr David Tipene-Leach, a Napier GP, and a research fellow in the Otago department, in the new study.
Through a partnership with the Hawkes Bay District Health Board, the researchers will study 100 infants using pepi-pods in the Hawkes Bay area.
The Health and Safety Commission had asked district health boards to create policy and intervention strategy to ensure every baby had a safe sleeping environment in order to decrease the country's high Sudi rate, the researchers said.
Pepi-pods were now being provided for vulnerable infants in some DHBs despite ''no prior studies of its safety'', the researchers said.
Prof Doug Sellman, of Otago University's Christchurch campus, will lead research, funded by a $176,310 HRC grant, to examine a ''food addiction'' approach to obesity, involving an obesity recovery network called Kia Akina.
Other HRC funding went to Dr William Abbott, of the Auckland District Health Board ($174,386) and Dr Paul Young, of the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand ($200,000).