MEA MOTU

In this powerful and personal keynote, Mea Motu—New Zealand's world champion boxer—opens up about her journey to the top of the boxing world while living with asthma. From childhood struggles to global victories, Mea shares how she turned a health challenge into a source of strength.

LADY TUREITI MOXON

On average, Māori have the poorest health status of any ethnic group in Aotearoa. Māori are more than twice as likely to die from preventable diseases. Māori are twice as likely to face discrimination in health and Māori are less likely to be referred for diagnostic tests. In April 2024, Te Kōhao Health opened Taakiri Tuu - a health wellness and diagnostic centre within the community of Papanui (Enderley) in Kirikiriroa (Hamilton) - as our response to arresting the five biggest killers of Māori: cardiovascular disease, breast cancer, cervical cancer, bowel cancer, and lung cancer. One year later, we signed a ‘Declaration of Intent’ with Te Whatu Ora and a ‘Joint Venture Partnership Agreement’ with Pacific Radiology to bring imaging and specialist clinic’s closer to the community.

CHERYL DAVIES

Cheryl has managed Tū Kotahi Māori Asthma Trust over the past 33 years and worked as a Maori researcher over the past 26 years. In this presentation, she will share share their Whānau Ora collective, Tākiri Mai Te Ata experiences and insights of implementing a Whānau Ora model of care. It will explore the practical realities of delivering Whānau Ora, including the opportunities and challenges of working with whānau to identify and address their unique needs.  We will discuss the lessons learned from our journey, including the importance of flexibility, adaptability, and a willingness to learn and improve.

KEVIN PEWHAIRANGI

How can we unlock accessible clinical services, education and care through pharmacy? This presentation will share an insight into the method used at Horouta Pharmacy, a rural Māori pharmacy in Gisborne that also manages seven pharmacy depots and four medical clinics across te Tairāwhiti.

PROFESSOR BOB HANCOX

The updated Asthma and Respiratory Foundation of New Zealand’s COPD Guidelines 2025 revises the previous 2021 COPD Guidelines, in line with the latest national and international evidence.  They provide simple, practical, evidence-based recommendations for the diagnosis, assessment, and management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in clinical practice in a New Zealand context. The NZ COPD Guidelines 2025 will be launched at the New Zealand Respiratory Conference. They will be translated into tools for practical use by health professionals and used to update health pathways, as well as new and existing patient resources, publications, and training resources.

Dr Sarah Rhodes

Blurb to come.

PROFESSOR RICHARD BEASLEY

The treatable traits approach is based on the recognition that the different clinical phenotypes of asthma are a heterogeneous group of conditions with different underlying mechanisms and clinical manifestations, and that the identification and treatment of the specific clinical features or traits facilitates a personalised approach to management. Fundamentally, it recognises two important concepts. Firstly, that the treatment of asthma can achieve better outcomes if guided by specific clinical characteristics. Secondly, that in patients with a diagnosis of asthma, poor respiratory health may also be due to numerous overlapping disorders that can present with symptoms that may be indistinguishable from asthma, comorbidities that might require treatment in their own right, and lifestyle or environmental factors that, if addressed, might lead to better control rather than simply increasing asthma directed treatment.

DR AMY CHAN

Despite their adverse effects, oral corticosteroids remain a crucial component in asthma management. This talk shares the experiences and perceptions of both patients and healthcare providers regarding the use of oral corticosteroids for asthma in New Zealand. The presentation will discuss the positive and negative experiences of patients, the decision-making process behind prescribing of these medications, and the potential strategies for improved oral corticosteroid stewardship in New Zealand.

LAURA RENSFORD

Children with bronchiectasis are often less active than their peers, a gap further widened by concerns about breathlessness and coughing during exertion. Many parents and children struggle to distinguish between normal shortness of breath and respiratory distress requiring intervention, leading to avoidance of exercise or withdrawal from PE at school and increased inhaler use. This session will explore the benefits of physical activity for children with bronchiectasis, how to differentiate normal exertional breathlessness from breathing pattern dysfunction and other respiratory conditions, such as asthma. It will also cover strategies to manage breathlessness safely, when to refer to physiotherapy, and provide practical guidance for healthcare providers—including nurses, GPs, physiotherapists, and pharmacists—on how to support children and families in encouraging safe and confident participation in physical activity.

BETTY POOT

2023 saw the publication of the updated Thoracic society of Australia and New Zealand (TSANZ) bronchiectasis guidelines. This guideline aims to increase the awareness of bronchiectasis, improve diagnosis and best practice management. During this session we will introduce you to the new bronchiectasis resources developed for the Asthma and Respiratory Foundation NZ and freely available on their website. 

PROFESSOR NEVIL PIERSE

Nevil will present the outcomes five years after improving housing quality and housing homeless people. Foucused on two examples, the Healthy Housing Initiative with which looks at home interventions to prevent rehospitalisation of children with housing related disease. This programme has accessed and remediated over 50,000 homes in New Zealand and resulted over 10,000 prevented hospital admissions. The Healthy Housing Initiative was awarded the Prime Minister Sprit of Service award in 2019.    He will also report on the impact of housing people experiencing homeless with the exemplar of The Peoples Project in Hamilton. Nevil has a keen interest in big data and leads 5 Housing and Health projects on the integrated data infrastructure. In 2021 the group was awarded the Rutherford Medal for the quality and Impact of their work.

DR LUCY TELFAR-BARNARD

Respiratory disease continues to contribute a significant burden of disease in Aotearoa New Zealand. This presentation provides an overview of the key findings of the 2024 Impact of Respiratory Disease Report, including who is most affected, where the greatest inequities lie, and how these patterns have shifted over the past two decades. Covering asthma, COPD, bronchiectasis, bronchiolitis, childhood pneumonia, and total respiratory disease, the presentation outlines the human and economic costs of respiratory illness, as well as opportunities for improvement through change to policy and practice.

DR ROB BURRELL

The carbon footprint of asthma inhalers is about 50 000 tonnes per year, in Aotearoa alone. We will put this in context, and talk about solutions that we have employed, and options not yet taken. The answers lie with the people in the room; we can all participate in decarbonisation of healthcare.

DR ADRIAN TRENHOLME

Dr Trenholme will review the large body of evidence showing the marked effectiveness of the maternal vaccine, adult vaccine, and long-acting monoclonal antibodies used in many countries including Australia for the whole population. He will discuss the current woeful situation in New Zealand and discuss cost effectiveness and ways forward in our country.

LETITIA HARDING

Vaping in Aotearoa; they say that where there is smoke there is fire, well, there may be no smoke, but there is certainly a lot of heat when it comes to vaping.  In this presentation I will talk about Aotearoa’s journey with vaping, and the role that the Foundation has played since 2017.  I will also compare how New Zealand has measured up against Article 5.3 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) which sets out an obligation that 'in setting and implementing  their public health policies with respect to tobacco control, Parties shall act to protect policies from the commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry in accordance with national law'. Has new Zealand met this obligation?

DR KELLY BURROWES

We are applying a bioengineering approach to understand how the lungs respond to vaping, with the hope of preventing a potential vaping-related health crisis. Electronic cigarettes, e-cigarettes, or vapes were introduced as a revolutionary tool to undo the unprecedented harm of conventional cigarettes. But we still don’t know how safe e-cigarettes are on long-term health. Our bioengineering approach has included developing a ‘vaping robot’ to capture aerosol for chemical analysis – to determine what is being inhaled - and to expose lung cells to e-cigarette aerosol. We have applied our realistic computer models of the lungs to simulate where the vape aerosol goes and how much deposits in the lungs. We have applied imaging techniques and other methods to measure lung function to study the effects of vaping on airflow, blood flow, and overall lung function. Our research continues to look for early markers of harm due to vaping – including measuring markers in sputum, using imaging and image analysis techniques to analyse the lungs, and studying the lymphatic vessels in the lungs. In this presentation, I will discuss what we know so far and our research to date.

SHARON PIHEMA

The demand for vaping education in schools and communities has only grown since we first raised this kaupapa at the 2023 NZ Respiratory Conference. Over the past year, we’ve delivered more than 350 workshops in over 60 schools, reaching more than 6,000 rangatahi and tamariki. To meet this growing need in a way that’s sustainable - and recognising that local solutions work best - we launched a Train-The-Trainer vaping education programme. This kaupapa supports educators, health professionals, and community leaders to deliver vaping education in their own communities. Sharon will share how the programme is going and where it’s headed next.