Nature and amount of research funding

Annual research expenditure in the period of the mid-80s to mid- 90s has been between $400,000- $500,000. As a result of increasing donor support, the Foundation has been able to increase that commitment by about $50,000 each year and now, the Council has approved a major leap from $750,000 to a $1 million a year.

The research projects funded have been of three kinds:

Basic
Laboratory based projects, with little immediate result for practical management of neurological disease, but with the potential for contributing to major treatment advances in the future.

Clinical
Projects in which the status and course of patients during an illness is studied and perhaps the effect of treatment assessed - with the potential of improvement of treatment in the near future, up to the next five years.

Intermediate
Projects partly based in the laboratory and partly clinical, some with the possibility of immediate return, some with longer term potential. The following table (below) gives an account of the expenditure in these three categories since the Foundation started; the dollar terms are converted to present day figures by using the Consumer Price Index.

When the Foundation first started, the projects were almost all basic research because university people were the only ones familiar with the processes of planning a project and applying for funding. Later, more clinical projects were put up, but the proportion of allotted funds was small. In 1987 the Scientific Advisory Committee addressed this problem and decided that a 'Senior Clinical Research Fellow' should be funded. This would be someone of senior status - usually a full consultant - who would be working half time on clinical care in a hospital, for which he or she would be paid by the hospital - and would have half their time paid by the Foundation to carry

An MRI scan is used to look "inside" the brain of a patient.

out clinical research. Dr Terri Inder whose work has been widely reported in Headlines was the first appointment, in 1999.

The Foundation is almost totally funded by individual New Zealanders, with over 95% of our resources coming from donations and bequests. The national office is in Auckland and there are 14 divisions serving communities throughout New Zealand. Our supporters number approximately 35,000 people.

The Neurological Foundation quarterly newsletter Headlines is sent to supporters free of charge.