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AMRF

Celebrating Dr. Cervantée Wild: A Homecoming for Child Health Researcher

Updated: Nov 6

The Douglas Goodfellow Repatriation Fellowship is a prestigious AMRF award, designed to bring our brightest emerging researchers back home. This year, the honour goes to Dr. Cervantée Wild, a New Zealander with a dedicated focus on child health and health systems research.


Profile photo of Dr Rachael Sumner
Dr Cervantée Wild

Cervantée’s journey is nothing short of inspiring. Born and raised in Taranaki, she has always been committed to making a difference in health care.


“This fellowship is a game-changer for me,” she says. “It allows me to return home at a crucial time in my career and re-establish myself as a leader in a field of work that I am very passionate about.”


With her internationally gained skills, Cervantée is keen to make a significant impact here in New Zealand with her focus firmly fixed on improving health services for tamariki (children), rangatahi (young people), and their whānau (families).


“Untreated health conditions in children can have serious impacts on their development and wellbeing."

“In New Zealand, long wait times for specialist healthcare have been a persistent issue since the early 1990s so it’s crucial to understand how many children are affected, the systemic factors behind these delays, and the inequities faced by Māori and other disadvantaged groups.”


Dr Wild’s background makes her ideally qualified to take the lead on research in this area of public health.


After receiving the Girdlers’ Research Fellow HRC fellowship in 2021, she travelled to England and undertook advanced research training at the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, one of the top-ranked centres for academic primary care in the UK. 


It was in the UK that Cervantée led one of the first studies to understand the experiences of children, young people and parents/caregivers dealing with a new disease: Long Covid. This work resulted in the creation of an online, public resource; academic and policy publications; and submissions to the Scottish Long Covid Inquiry and the Westminster All-Party Parliamentary Group.


Cervantée’s expertise continued to grow and to be recognised globally and, in 2023, she spoke as part of a panel at the ‘Europe A Patient’ Policy and Values conference in Warsaw and facilitated workshops for the leads of the NHS Integrated Care Board.


She was also the coordinating author on a World Health Organisation Europe report on non-communicable diseases and authored two case studies, receiving an Oxford Policy Engagement Network Fellowship to work with WHO’s Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research team on research and policy agendas for commercial determinants of health in low-middle income countries.


Before her time in the UK, Cervantée completed her PhD at the University of Auckland and worked as a Research Fellow in the Department of Paediatrics. She maintains an honorary position there, reflecting her ongoing commitment to child health.


With the Douglas Goodfellow Repatriation Fellowship bringing Cervantée home in late 2024, she will be ready to put her research plans into action by early 2025.  Her study is entitled ‘The Waiting Game:  Children on waitlists for specialist health services’:


Reducing wait times for specialist services has been a priority of the Aotearoa New Zealand government for decades – with a target announced in March 2024 – yet reporting shows that more and more people are waiting longer for necessary healthcare. However, current reporting tells us very little about the children who are on these waiting lists, many of whom are waiting alongside adults for services.


This study will provide vital information to improve access to timely specialist health services for children. We will: (i) examine how many children are waiting for specialist services, what proportion receive appointments, follow-ups, and treatment within target times, and whether there is inequity in waiting times based on where children live or their age, gender, and ethnicity; (ii) explore how the wait list target is implemented and how this is experienced by different groups.


This research aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of paediatric wait times in NZ, addressing both the quantity and quality of healthcare access for children. By highlighting any inequities and systemic issues through mixed methods, the study seeks to inform policy changes that ensure timely and equitable access to specialist health services for all children in NZ. Given the current policy focus on waitlists yet lack of policy focus on child health, this is time-critical work to understand the unintended consequences of wait list targets and their impact


We look forward to welcoming you home, Dr Wild, and funding you to undertake this vital public health research.

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