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Budget 2025: Extent of funding for nutrition-related policy & work programmes

J Bruning made this Official Information request to Shane Reti

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From: J Bruning

Dear Shane Reti,

Increasingly, conventional medical clinicians and general practitioners operate with one arm behind their back, on the surface, oblivious in the face of expanding scientific knowledge on the role of nutrition in preventing, treating and reversing common conditions.

It is evident that there is a prevailing hypocrisy – one that can only naturally erode public trust - at the heart of New Zealand's health system. It involves a crazy bifurcation towards the medical, where only medicine can be prescribed at the latest known dose, not vitamins and minerals (micronutrients). This is modern public health.

Markedly, drugs are not essential nutrients. Yet it seems there is no department in the Ministry of Health with an obligation to elevate the role of essential micronutrients to a level of importance in human health functioning to where dietary nutrients are equal to, or more important than chemically and biologically synthesised drugs.

Somehow the Ministry of Health appears to believe that increasing equity of availability to drug treatment is sufficient for the prevention and maintenance of health. Availability to nutrition is not prioritised for the prevention and maintenance of health. This approach is a pervasively corrupted approach. It perpetuates a path-dependent institutional myth, medical valorisation, that most appallingly, straightjackets our poorest and most nutrient-deprived groups into medical dependency and polypharmacy.

While higher income people have the capacity to address this shortfall and actively research and fund their own treatments to address the consequences of inadequate diets, poorer groups do not.

As a trained medical doctor, you should be well aware that many chronic physical and neurological conditions will present alongside chronic nutritional deficiencies. Deficiencies will of course, be exacerbated in low-income populations which include Māori and Pasifika.

Failure to address deficiencies, instead promotes intergenerational medical dependency, dietary poverty, chronic disease, and the fatigue and poor health that prevents people from actively participating in education, training, job seeking and full-time work.

Passive Health Ministers inevitably grow welfare dependency while limiting economic growth, because people remain effectively, disabled, as conditions accrue over time.
It is very obvious that Māori and Pasifika can lead healthy lives that do not include intergenerational drug dependency and medicalisation from infancy onwards.

It is broadly obvious that people with neurological diseases and disorders commonly present with other common conditions. That across physical and mental illness, poor and insufficient diets underpin our common diseases and syndromes producing less resilient bodies and minds, to cope with the mundane, devastating and/or existential stressors of modern life.

It is well described in the literature that physiological processes require multiple micronutrients as cofactors. Health and homeostasis very simply, cannot be sustained without adequate levels of micronutrients.

But where is the funding and resourcing for this (pervasively neglected) work?

Vote Health includes funding for Pharmac to both manage and purchase pharmaceuticals. The Ministry of Health has the power to increase funding for testing services to assess nutritional deficiency by age and stage, and to expand nutrient access for treatment of chronic conditions (mental and physical).

Please forward all memos and advice sent from or to you relating to funding for the 2025/2026 budget:

(a) discussing nutrition programmes (including research). This can include reviewing the scientific evidence to update nutrition recommendations, staff and clinician education, and public health measures.
(b) Increased access to testing for nutritional deficiency where blood serum levels and deficiency is well described in the literature.
(c) Increasing access to vitamin D dietary supplementation and the range of conditions associated with vitamin D deficiency.
(d) Access to dietary nutrients for treatment of depression, anxiety and ADHD.
(e) Funding to support and promote nutrition education at primary and secondary level.

Please do not delay a response to this. Members of Parliament deserve to understand how neglected nutrition-based health policy has been. It is only if MPs are made aware this situation, that they might support you in such endeavours.

A wide catchment of public health and practitioner physicians and experts would support you in such a policy shift, as they too are frustrated in having 'one arm tied behind their back'.

Yours faithfully,

J Bruning

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From: Shane Reti (MIN)
Shane Reti



Kia ora 

Thank you for your email to Hon Dr Shane Reti, Minister of Health and
Minister for Pacific Peoples. We will endeavour to respond to your email
as soon as possible.

Due to the high volume of emails this office receives, we may not be able
to provide you with an individualised response. You may find the following
helpful:

·   If you are a Whangārei constituent contacting Dr Reti about an issue
related to his electorate, your email will be passed to his electorate
office for consideration.

·   Invitations and requests to meet with the Minister will be considered
and we will be in touch with you in due course.

·   Requests for official information will be managed in accordance with
provisions of the Official Information Act (1982), which may include a
transfer to a more relevant Minister or agency.

If your email falls outside of the Minister's portfolio responsibilities,
expresses a personal view, or is copied to multiple Members of Parliament,
then your email will be noted and may be transferred to another Minister’s
office, or there may be no further response to you.

Associate Ministers

·   Hon Matt Doocey; Minister for Mental Health, Minister for ACC, and
Associate Minister of Health. If your matter relates to ACC, mental
health, neurodiversity, or rural health, you can contact Hon Doocey by
emailing [1][email address].

·   Hon Casey Costello; Associate Minister of Health. If your matter
relates to emergency services, women’s health, aged care, or smoking and
vaping, you can contact Hon Costello by emailing
[2][email address].

·   Hon David Seymour; Associate Minister of Health. If your matter
relates to Pharmac, Medsafe, or medicines funding and supply, you can
contact Hon Seymour by emailing [3][email address].

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Ngā mihi nui

 

 

Office of Hon Dr Shane Reti

Minister of Health
[9]Image
Minister for Pacific Peoples
  Email: [Shane Reti request email]

Private Bag 18041, Parliament Buildings, Wellington 6160, New
Zealand

 

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From: Shane Reti (MIN)
Shane Reti

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Kia ora

 

Thank you for your request for official information under the Official
Information Act 1982 (the Act) to the Office of Hon Dr Shane Reti. You
requested:

 

“Please forward all memos and advice sent from or to you relating to
funding for the 2025/2026 budget:

 

(a) discussing nutrition programmes (including research). This can include
reviewing the scientific evidence to update nutrition recommendations,
staff and clinician education, and public health measures.

(b) Increased access to testing for nutritional deficiency where blood
serum levels and deficiency is well described in the literature.

(c) Increasing access to vitamin D dietary supplementation and the range
of conditions associated with vitamin D deficiency.

(d) Access to dietary nutrients for treatment of depression, anxiety and
ADHD.

(e) Funding to support and promote nutrition education at primary and
secondary level.”

 

The reference number for your request is: SROIA-403

As required under the Official Information Act 1982, the Office will
endeavour to respond to your request no later than 20 working days after
the day your request was received. You can expect a response by 14
February 2024.

 

Under section 28(3) of the Act you have the right to ask the Ombudsman to
review any decisions made under this request. The Ombudsman may be
contacted by email at: [1][email address] or by calling 0800
802 602. 

 

 

Ngā mihi

 

 

Office of Hon Dr Shane Reti

Minister of Health

Minister for Pacific Peoples
Email: [2][email address]

Private Bag 18041, Parliament Buildings, Wellington 6160, New Zealand

 

 

 

 

 

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