[1] In April 2015 Jennifer McMahon was appointed the first Chair of the 7-member Governance Group for Healthier Lives, which held its first full meeting on 27 October 2015.

In August 2015 MBIE approved funding for the Heathier Lives National Science Challenge (HLNSC), with a budget of $31.26 million over 10 years.

[2] Additional funding came from collaborations: the Long Term Conditions partnership with the Health Research Council and the Ministry of Health established five research projects with a total budget of $7.9 million,[3][4] and a partnership equally funded by HLNSC and the Heart Foundation supported a $2 million three-year study, Manawataki Fatu Fatu, on cardiovascular disease inequities amongst Māori and Pasifika.

[10] This strategy addressed three areas: precision medicine for cancer and cardiovascular disease; culturally-centred health programmes for Māori and Pasifika; and healthy food and physical activity environments.

[16] The Ministry of Health adopted the new equations into its 2018 guidelines[17] and issued a new data standard,[18] which was incorporated into MedTech, the medical records system widely used by New Zealand GPs.

Another approach to predicting risk of cardiovascular disease was developed by a team led by Greg T. Jones using epigenetics: reversible changes to DNA from environmental factors such as smoking.

[21] The Framework was used to co-design two health programmes, one targeting Māori men at risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and obesity,[22] and the other, Kimi Ora, a healthy lifestyle intervention.

[23]Te Kāika DiRECT, a randomised controlled trial of 40 participants, most Māori or Pasifika, with prediabetes or type 2 diabetes, examined the effectiveness of a total three-month meal replacement regime and behavioural support for weight loss; the results suggested it was a non-surgical alternative to a solely dietitian-supported care programme.

[27] The Mana Tū project, initiated by the National Hauora Coalition, which set up a network of community health workers and GPs to support Māori and Pacific people living with type 2 diabetes, was evaluated by Matire Harwood.

[28] The three-year trial studied the effectiveness of training healthcare navigators/kaimanaaki (social workers, nurses, and receptionists) to work with diabetes patients, with 400 participants over 10 GP clinics.

OL@-OR@, a mobile-phone (app and website) delivering lifestyle support programme for Māori and Pasifika, was co-designed and evaluated in a partnership between a team of university researchers led by Clíona Ní Mhurchú, Lisa Te Morenga, and Ridvan Firestone, and community providers Toi Tangata, The Fono, and South Waikato Pacific Islands Community Services.

[44] Related research led by Andrew Reynolds modelled five scenarios for replacing red meat in the New Zealand diet and found significant benefits associated with all of them.

[52][53][54] A study of the effect of the 2022–2023 half-price bus fares in Christchurch found 45% of lower-income residents had been able to afford additional trips and more food and essentials.

[57] The team also examined how to link community lab information to the wider health system, using a dataset of ten years of test results for Heliobacter pylori, a major cause of stomach cancer which has significantly different death rates across ethnicities in New Zealand.

[58] Several studies led by Andrea Teng used big data to answer health questions:[59] one looked at the rates of cardiovascular disease following the Canterbury earthquakes,[60][61] another at the factors affecting the progression of prediabetes to type 2 diabetes in New Zealand (including the novel finding that speaking Te Reo Māori is associated with a reduced risk of progression),[62] and a third estimated the prevalence of cancer in New Zealand.