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Newsroom
22-05-2025
- Health
- Newsroom
There's something wrong with NZ's youth suicide stats
Warning: This article discusses suicide Last week, a Unicef report grabbed headlines with claims our youth suicide rate is three times higher than the international average for high-income countries. But two researchers from the University of Auckland, who are experts in youth mental health, say that figure is wrong. The global charity's report on child wellbeing came out last Wednesday, with New Zealand ranking the lowest out of 36 countries for mental wellbeing. The graph attracting the most attention was on youth suicide rates, in which New Zealand outranked all other countries, with a rate of 17.1 per 100,000 15 to 19-year-olds. 'This is our whole world, this research, so we know what the data look like for New Zealand,' associate professor Sarah Hetrick tells The Detail. 'We just knew when we saw it that it wasn't correct.' The Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Justice collectively supply figures on suicide. In New Zealand, the coroner must determine whether a death was by suicide before it can be recorded as confirmed. That's why the suicide web data tool displays both confirmed and suspected figures. Associate professor Sarah Fortune, who is the director for population mental health at University of Auckland, explains the difference. 'The first one is called confirmed deaths, so that tells us that the circumstances of that person's death have been reviewed by the coroner and have been recorded as being a suicide death, and then we have suspected cases, which indicates that that situation is still open to the coroner,' she says. The Unicef Report Card 19 analyses trends in youth suicide using only data on confirmed suicide rates. Because countries have different processes and timeframes around releasing this data, Unicef calculated each country's average based on the figures from the three most recent years available. For New Zealand, that meant data from 2018-2020 was used, and about a third of the other countries were the same. (For New Zealand, this gave an average of 17.1 per 100,000 15 to 19-year olds.) But we do have more recent suspected suicide rates. That data says in the financial year of 2021-2022, the rate was 12.3. The most recent figures from 2023-2024 show the rate dropped to 11.8. While suspected and confirmed rates aren't comparable, Hetrick says the confirmed rates do tend to follow the trend set out by the suspected rates. Averaging out figures to 'smooth fluctuations' isn't uncommon, so the figures in the report aren't necessarily wrong – but they do contradict the declining rate of suspected suicides during that period. Unicef Aotearoa's Tania Sawicki Mead says the report isn't attempting to make things look worse than they are. 'In order to make a useful comparison between countries the report uses like-for-like data in order to make sure that there is a genuinely useful comparator about how countries are doing over that time frame,' she says. 'We are really keen to understand what the long-term trends are for youth suicide to understand if what we are doing is working.' But Hetrick worries this report promotes headlines and discussion about declining youth wellbeing that contributes to the hopeless narrative, which isn't helpful for youth who are struggling. 'The risk is that young people particularly will hear wellbeing's not going so great and suicide's going up, and pairing those two things together as though somehow suicide is an inevitable consequence of poor wellbeing is a very dangerous message.' Another issue Hetrick immediately had with the report is that suicide was one of only two indicators used to measure mental wellbeing. 'We would very strongly say that whilst mental health can be a contributor, that the two things are not equivalent. So there are many, many, many more things about a young person's life and the environment in which they live that impacts on wellbeing.' Hetrick says other data like that in the Youth2000 series looks at several different indicators that contribute to youth wellbeing, some of which show things are improving. 'For sure some things are not as good as they were, but some things have improved so I think there was a fundamental problem even with using suicide data as one of only two indicators of youth wellbeing.' Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here. You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter.
The Hill
20-04-2025
- Health
- The Hill
Research monkeys entangled in Trump-Harvard dispute get reprieve
(NewsNation) — Research monkeys used in a tuberculosis study faced the prospect of being euthanized after the Trump administration pulled funding from Harvard University, but now, a philanthropic organization has offered to help. Harvard's Dr. Sarah Fortune had warned that rhesus macaque test subjects could be euthanized because of the federal grant freeze. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine are studying the primates as part of a broader project being coordinated by Harvard. On Friday, the Boston Globe reported that California-based Open Philanthropy has authorized a $500,000 grant to support the research work in Pennsylvania. Fortune said she was elated to learn about the gift, but People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals criticized her for raising the specter of euthanizing the animals. PETA, which opposes the use of animals for research, said the monkeys could have been given to caretakers or sanctuaries. 'Experiments on animals fail to produce cures and treatments for humans, they are cruel, and there are superior human-relevant methods available,' the group said in a news release. Harvard has refused to follow various directives from the Trump administration as a condition for receiving grants. Federal officials froze billions in research funding.
Yahoo
19-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Research monkeys entangled in Trump-Harvard dispute get reprieve
(NewsNation) — Research monkeys used in a tuberculosis study faced the prospect of being euthanized after the Trump administration pulled funding from Harvard University, but now, a philanthropic organization has offered to help. Harvard's Dr. Sarah Fortune had warned that rhesus macaque test subjects could be euthanized because of the federal grant freeze. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine are studying the primates as part of a broader project being coordinated by Harvard. Harvard pushes back against Trump's demands On Friday, the Boston Globe reported that California-based Open Philanthropy has authorized a $500,000 grant to support the research work in Pennsylvania. Fortune said she was elated to learn about the gift, but People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals criticized her for raising the specter of euthanizing the animals. PETA, which opposes the use of animals for research, said the monkeys could have been given to caretakers or sanctuaries. 'Experiments on animals fail to produce cures and treatments for humans, they are cruel, and there are superior human-relevant methods available,' the group said in a news release. Harvard has refused to follow various directives from the Trump administration as a condition for receiving grants. Federal officials froze billions in research funding. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
New York Times
16-04-2025
- Health
- New York Times
Space Travel and Tuberculosis Research Are Hit by Trump's Harvard Cuts
Dr. Sarah Fortune, an immunologist who spends a lot of time in her laboratory at Harvard, never expected to be caught in a battle with the White House. But early Tuesday morning, she received an official notice to 'stop work' on her lab's federally funded research on tuberculosis, an infectious disease that kills more than a million people a year worldwide. Just hours earlier, the Trump administration had vowed to freeze $2.2 billion in research funding at Harvard. If fully executed, it will be the deepest cut yet in a White House campaign against elite universities that began shortly after President Trump took office in January. Other universities, including Princeton, Cornell and Columbia, have also seen deep cuts to research funding. Dr. Fortune's contract, a $60 million National Institutes of Health agreement involving Harvard and other universities across the country, appeared to be one of the first projects affected. Stop-work notices also began arriving this week at an obscure Harvard office called 'sponsored programs' that coordinates federal research funding. One Harvard professor, David R. Walt, received a notice that his research toward a diagnostic tool for Lou Gehrig's disease, or A.L.S., must stop immediately. Two other orders will affect research on space travel and radiation sickness, just weeks after the scientist, Dr. Donald E. Ingber, who engineers fake organs that are useful in studies of human illnesses, was approached by the government to expand his work. The Trump administration, which warned that another $7 billion may be at stake at Harvard, has framed its campaign to cut research dollars as an effort to combat antisemitism. Harvard had appeared to be seeking ways to work with the White House, until a letter to the school on Friday expanded the administration's demands, with new requirements that had nothing to do with antisemitism. On Monday, Harvard's president, Alan M. Garber, put his foot down, saying that Mr. Trump's administration had gone too far. He has been applauded for resisting, but his school, along with the nation's other elite research universities, is extremely dependent on federal research funds. In a news briefing Tuesday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said that Harvard had not taken the president's demands seriously, resulting in the funding cuts. Noting Harvard's large endowment, which is about $53 billion, she added, 'Why are the American taxpayers subsidizing a university that has billions of dollars in the bank already?' Harvard is still processing the incoming notices and has not yet disclosed the exact amount that has been cut. Even short-term reductions could be devastating to work that has helped the United States stay competitive and even helped keep people alive, college leaders and researchers said. Dr. Walt, the A.L.S. researcher, who received a presidential medal last year for his work, said the order put in jeopardy 'a transformative diagnostic test that may never see the light of day.' He added, 'If this project is terminated, which is the likely outcome, and then other projects are terminated as well, people are going to die.' Even before the explicit attack on Harvard, the Trump administration had been cutting research expenses on campuses across the country, part of a broad effort to reduce federal government spending and end projects that contradict its policy aims, including work that touches on gender and race. Harvard had already lost millions. An analysis last week by The Harvard Crimson found $110 million in cuts, many of them in projects that involved sexuality or gender. Cancellations have been executed so quickly and with so little warning since Mr. Trump took office that academics have had difficulty tallying them. University leaders have been scrambling to assemble in-house lists of stop-work orders that were sent to individual researchers. Complicating matters, the White House has sometimes announced cuts far larger than what the schools receive from the federal government in any given year. The Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities said on Wednesday that it had been unable to tally the fallout on its members, noting that the figure was 'constantly changing.' Some administrators have wondered whether the government is inflating its estimates, speculating that it is including previously spent money in its totals. The White House has declined to comment on the concerns of campus administrators. In some cases, there were no official announcements that cuts were coming at all. The president of the University of Pennsylvania, J. Larry Jameson, has said that initial word of a $175 million reduction for the university came through media reports. Eventually, Dr. Jameson said, faculty members in seven of Penn's schools received stop-work orders that added up to about $175 million. The experience was much the same at Princeton, where researchers received notifications suspending dozens of grants without any formal word from Washington to the university about 'the full rationale,' said its president, Christopher L. Eisgruber. Mr. Eisgruber said last week he would not make any concessions to the White House. Princeton and Cornell are among about a dozen universities, along with major university associations, that have jointly sued the administration over cuts to research. With the deeper cuts now looming at Harvard, Dr. Garber, a physician, is keenly aware of the risks. In a statement this week explaining why Harvard was refusing to comply with the government's demands, he argued that federal research partnerships with universities are beneficial to both schools and society. 'For the government to retreat from these partnerships now risks not only the health and well-being of millions of individuals but also the economic security and vitality of our nation,' he said. Dr. Ingber said he found the government's decision to end $20 million in contracts for his work on space travel and radiation baffling. 'They're canceling these two programs at a time when the government is announcing that they're going to build nuclear reactors all across the country to provide energy,' Dr. Ingber said. 'And they're also wanting to go to Mars.' 'They know how to destroy,' he added. 'They don't know how to create.' Despite the consequences, the scientists whose projects were cut agreed that Harvard was doing the right thing. Dr. Walt said he would begin searching for alternate funding. 'I'm pleased that Harvard had the courage to do this,' he said, 'and am willing to accept it.'
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Researchers fear science will suffer as Harvard stands to lose $2.2 billion in federal funding
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP/Boston 25) — In a high-stakes standoff, President Donald Trump's administration says it will freeze $2.2 billion in federal research grants for Harvard University, which is pushing back on demands for changes to campus policy. The feud between the Republican administration and the nation's wealthiest college will be closely watched across higher education as the White House uses federal funding as leverage to pursue compliance with its political agenda. But the impact will be felt most immediately by researchers at the Ivy League school and its partner institutions. While some have cheered Harvard's stand against demands to crack down on protesters and pursue more viewpoint diversity among faculty, others worry life-saving scientific research will be endangered. Across the university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, federal money accounted for 10.5% of revenue in 2023, not counting financial aid such as grants and student loans. What research will be affected? Harvard has not released a list of affected grants, and it's possible the university doesn't yet have a clear idea of what might be frozen. At other campuses hit with funding freezes, the details of the cuts only became clear over time as work orders were halted. At Brown University, a White House official said it was planning to freeze half a billion dollars in federal money on April 3, but university officials said Tuesday they still did not know which programs might be targeted. At Harvard, an Education Department official said hospitals affiliated with the university will not be affected. Five Boston-area teaching hospitals affiliated with Harvard Medical School, considered among the world's top medical institutions, operate as financially independent non-profits. Their staff often have teaching appointments at Harvard Medical School and their research is funded largely by federal grants. But the work that could be vulnerable to cuts includes research at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, which says 46% of its budget last year was funded through federal grants. Among other things, this paid for research on cancer, Alzheimer's, stroke and HIV. Boston 25 News has learned that Sarah Fortune, Chair of the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, was ordered to halt her tuberculosis research. Fortune's lab focuses on the diversity of tuberculosis bacteria and how that contributes to differences in the disease, as well as treatment outcomes, according to her biography. 'That research was supported by a $60 million NIH contract and involved collaborative work by Harvard and multiple other universities across the U.S.,' a Harvard University spokesperson said. Why doesn't Harvard use its sizable endowment to pay for research? Harvard has a $53 billion endowment, the largest in the country. But Harvard leaders say the endowment is not an all-purpose account that can be used for anything the university pleases. Many donors earmarked their contributions for a specific goal or project. And Harvard has said it relies on some of the endowment to help subsidize tuition costs for middle class and low-income students. Last week, Harvard started working to borrow $750 million from Wall Street to help cover general expenses. The university has described the effort as part of contingency planning for a range of possible scenarios. What will this mean for undergraduate students? Losing federal research grants could mean fewer research opportunities for Harvard undergraduate students. If the funding cuts drive away faculty, it could also mean less exposure to top-tier researchers. Just last month Harvard had expanded financial aid so middle class families wouldn't have to pay as much for tuition, room and board. It's not clear whether losing federal grants might affect those plans. Outsiders have suggested Harvard and other universities should cut back on top-tier amenities to students to free up money for research. Harvard enrolls about 7,000 undergraduate students and around 18,000 students in graduate programs. This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available. Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW
