The internationally recognised Dunedin Study, which has followed the lives of 1037 Kiwis since birth, is turning 50.
On April 1, 1972, the first baby who participated in the study was born.
Now five decades on, the milestone is being celebrated.
Dr Phil Silva founded the project in the early 1970's.
He'd been involved in a small study of 225 children alongside Dunedin paediatrician Patricia Buckfield.
Silva assessed some of the children born between 1967- 1973 a few years later.
"I kept on finding these children with terrible problems - one three-year-old was almost blind, a lot of children had problems with their hearing, children at three and even five and seven who had language problems because of hearing loss," Silva says.
So he tracked down the parents of 1037 three year olds, who were brought in for assessments - this is when the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study, the Dunedin Study for short, began.
Initially, resources and funding were scarce, but Silva's son Jeremy says he made it work.
"When we were young, we wondered if everyone elses parents worked so hard.
"Dad worked really hard, he was a seven day a week man for many years when he was young," he says.
He recalls the assessments starting out in the condemned manse of Dunedin's Knox Church.
"On a Saturday morning dad would be up on the roof on this two storey building fixing the tiles and painting to make it acceptable as interview rooms," he says.
"I think of all those people, and the mothers bringing the three year olds in adverse weather conditions in snow and I feel very very grateful for their cooperation," says Silva.
There were dozens of volunteers that helped with assessments over the years; from blood samples to personality tests, to questions about substance abuse, sex and assault.
From being housed in the Knox Church, to an old building behind the Dental School, to now having a purpose built modern centre to conduct research, the study has achieved global recognition in many fields, and produced around 1400 published findings.
It was even on the front cover of Time Magazine in 1993.
Sex education was improved in the 90's following data that showed one in six females at age 21 suffer STIs, double the rate of men.
Researchers helped uncover a depression gene.
And Kiwi children exposed to high levels of lead in the 70's and 80's suffered as adults, resulting in the ban of leaded petrol here in 1996, and had impact further afield.
Terrie Moffitt, the study's Associate Director, based at Duke University in North Carolina says this finding has been important in the US.
"Up until now, cities were saying 'oh we still have old lead pipes from 1920 and 1930's, we'll just leave it because it may be troublesome for children but they grow out of it'.
"But now a large number of cities in the US have gone to court and put through cases that have raised the money to replace their entire water systems, so this is quite an amazing change in American public health and it's as a direct result of the Dunedin study, no American study was able to show that," Moffitt says.
Silva retired in 2000, and mentored Richie Poulton into the role of study director.
"It's been the absolute pleasure of my working life to be part of it for over a quarter of a century now," says Poulton.
"Phil set it up with really good bones so to speak, it was multi disciplinary from the get go and that was decades ahead in terms of foresight," he says.
Confidentiality is a huge component of the study.
We can't even interview any participants from the research, to protect their privacy.
Associate Director Terrie Moffitt says keeping their identity confidential is vital.
"I think that's the key to them being willing to take part year on year, is that they know that we will never ever violate the strict data security that we have promised them.
"Other countries have started studies like the Dunedin study but they tried to make the data open access and without consulting the study members and study members started to feel unsafe and started to drop out, so that's a thing that's been really special about the Dunedin Study as well is that we have this inviolable pact of data security for them," Moffitt says.
Another reason for confidentiality is the nature of the intense and personal interviews.
"There is not a phase that goes by where I'm not told by at least one or two study members that on the day of assessment, they told one of my research interviewers something that they'd never told another human being, even their spouse, so the trust is enormously high," says study director Richie Poulton.
Silva says the study's philosophy is to "treat all our people that we work with- study members and colleagues - as we would want to be treated ourselves, simple recipe, I think people know where that comes from and that's been the success of the thing really".
And it's paid off - an astonishing 94% of the members who are still alive continue to participate in ongoing research.
Forty-one participants have died since the study's inception, leaving 996 left in the cohort.
Although they're unseen, they're definitely not unsung.
The study members are called heroes for such a long commitment to the cause.
Associate Director Moffitt describes them as "simply amazing".
"They continue to take part and to put up with us and put their trust in us, their long standing participation is quite remarkable, they're beautiful people."
Founder Silva says their commitment has been an incredible investment and a gift to the world.
"And if you see me, if you spot me, cause I'm over 80 now and all bent up and got all sorts of melodies, do come up and say hello, and you'd be surprised, I might even remember you!" Silva says.
Fifty years of research, an incredible feat considering it's been a turbulent five decades.
Silva's son Jeremy says there were many hurdles to get to this point.
"One might have thought he should give up and go and get a day job, he had a large number of offers that paid regular salaries all over the world and he didn't do it.
"Dad was like a cork in a bucket they just keep pushing him down and he keeps popping up, the whole family's just hugely proud of dad," Silva says.
Now the research has come full circle, and will start to look at the process of ageing.
The study members will next be assessed in two years when they turn 52.
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