Projects

Students are identifying the environmental barriers and facilitators to being physically active, actively getting to school, eating healthily and having fun with learning about health.

Staff from three south Auckland libraries are building community gardens in collaboration with local community groups, businesses and schools to increase the diversity and abundance of beneficial insects.

Catchment groups working in South and West Otago have highlighted the need to help community members understand what lives in the area’s streams and to encourage students to consider the impacts of their own land use.

Students are researching and designing potential kitten-feeding solutions to reduce the workload, animal-stress and costs associated with SPCA staff having to hand-feed orphaned kittens.

Queenstown Primary School and partners will monitor 3 key sites in the Wakatipu Basin to objectively monitor vegetation change over time, with a focus on wilding pines.

Mary Butler (School of Occupational Therapy, Otago Polytechnic) and Tahuna Intermediate will trial a new co-screening approach to visual testing.

The Seachange Survey project was set up to create a community survey method, in conjunction with local schools and with input from residents, to monitor the health and distribution of pāua and other kaimoana species.

Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Ōtepoti staff and students and Dr Barbara Anderson will investigate whether kaikawakawa moth eating kawakawa leaves increase the medicinal properties of the kawakawa leaf.

Cystic Fibrosis Otago, with Cystic Fibrosis New Zealand and University of Otago researchers will investigate how people with CF are cleaning antibiotic residue from their nebulisers and how this might be impacting on antibiotic resistance.

New Zealand Marine Studies Centre (University of Otago) and community members are exploring the abundance and demographics of shark populations local to the Otago region.