Sharing success - Partridge Family establish Laureate Programme
Our congratulations to the first co-recipients of the Partridge Laureate Programme - Professor Julian Paton of Manaaki Manawa - The Centre for Heart Research, University of Auckland, and Dr Amanda Dixon-McIver, laboratory director at IGENZ.
The Laureate Programme is how the Partridge Family chose to mark the celebration of their 160th year in business and is a wonderful example of a family focusing its giving and acting in a thoughtful way for the benefit of Aotearoa New Zealand.
We were delighted to be able to play a role in helping Grant Partridge and his sons Cory, Sam and Jack to establish the programme, alongside The University of Auckland. Our Executive Director Frank Janssen worked with the family using our Navigator Programme to identify a cause area close to their hearts and assisting them with the development of a plan for turning the laureate idea into reality with the University of Auckland Foundation.
“We are lucky to enjoy generational success as a business and on behalf of myself and my children, we want to share that success by supporting those with the potential to make a real difference.” says Grant Partridge.
A cause area close to their hearts
Of the project’s focus areas, Grant’s youngest son Jack Partridge says “We considered several fields -health, innovation, arts, and culture - all of which are important to us. However, we wanted to take this opportunity to invest in an area that could make a significant difference to the lives of New Zealanders. This led us to focus on health sciences as a starting point, with an acknowledgement that as the programme grows, we may expand into other areas.”
The Inaugural Partridge Laureates’ work centres on heart health research. This includes leading a project to introduce a DNA sequencing technique to identify the most effective blood pressure medications for individual patients, a process that is currently reliant on trial and error resulting in ineffective treatment plans.
Inaugural co-Laureate, Professor Paton says of the programme: “The funds will allow us to do research that we could not otherwise do, opening up opportunities for impact. With cardiovascular disease the country’s biggest killer and high blood pressure the single most important risk factor causing heart attacks and strokes, our research will focus on better control of blood pressure thereby preventing the destructive outcomes that can occur.”
A healthier future for Aotearoa
Remarkably, over 50 percent of patients remain hypertensive despite treatment leaving them at serious risk of a cardiovascular event such as a stroke or heart attack. This is worsened if the patient is also diabetic. These patients represent a huge unmet clinical need within New Zealand’s health system. The pair’s project aims to determine why medications are not working in these patients, the reasons for which include either the wrong drug choice — the result of an archaic ‘trial and error’ process — and/or the current frontline medications are not targeting the reason for the patient’s high blood pressure.
“We propose to address these two issues specifically via a two-pronged approach,” explains Dr. Dixon-McIver. “The first being to test a new way to inform the patient what their optimal drug treatment should be (no more trial and error), and secondly, test pre-clinically a brand-new drug for controlling both blood pressure and blood sugar simultaneously.”
On becoming Partridge’s inaugural co-Laureate, Professor Paton remarks, “I am so impressed with the fact that a company that makes jewellery has made a national commitment to support research. You can’t do better than investing in the future to make New Zealand a healthier place for our children and our children’s children.”