Professor Christoph Schumacher, winner of the 2018 Research Translation Competition.
Massey Business School’s Professor Christoph Schumacher has won the 2018 Research Translation Competition for his summary of an academic paper about healthcare funding in New Zealand.
The annual Massey Business School competition, which asks academics to explain their research in simple terms, was opened to all New Zealand business schools for the first time this year.
Professor Schumacher’s article explained New Zealand’s complex system for funding district health boards based on the demographic characteristics and size of the population in each district.
Using Ministry of Health records for around 7.5 million publicly funded “hospital events”, Professor Schumacher and his colleagues found the system leads to New Zealand’s large teaching hospitals being underfunded for their work
“If our funding system disadvantages tertiary providers, that’s a serious problem,” Professor Schumacher says. “It means funding for treating the most difficult cases is insufficient and implies that resources are being inefficiently allocated to less severe cases.”
Making research accessible
A total of 35 entries from eight tertiary institutions were entered in this competition and the other prize winners were:
- Professor Ben Marshall (Massey Business School) second place for paper entitled: ‘What influences retirement savings decisions the most?’
- Dr Rachel Morrison (AUT) third place for paper entitled: ‘Hell is other people’
- Dr Joya Kemper (University of Auckland) Early Career Researcher Award for a paper entitled: ‘Fighting Obesity: The need for changing food culture and regulation’
All four prize winners will present their research at a special awards ceremony at Massey University on Tuesday November 27, where they will be recognised for their ability to make their research accessible to a non-academic audience.
“The annual Research Translation Competition asks business researchers to distil an academic paper into an engaging two-page article,” says event organiser Professor Kambiz Maani.
“Entries are judged on the quality of the research, its usefulness to the wider business community and the extent to which the impact of the research can be easily understood. This year’s winners were successful on all three fronts.”
The Massey Business School was recognised by the global accreditation body AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) for the competition’s innovative approach in 2016.
“Business school research is often criticised for being irrelevant to the real world,” says Massey Business School director of research Professor Tim Bentley.
“We started this competition to build the communication capabilities of our staff because it’s crucial the knowledge that results from what is often publicly-funded research is made accessible to those who can benefit from it.”
Event details
Research Translation Competition 2018 Awards Ceremony
Tuesday November 27, 12-2pm
Massey Business School Building, Room 2.15
To register to attend: http://bit.ly/RTC2018-Massey