Professor Richie Poulton, who for 23 years was director of the world-acclaimed Dunedin Study, has died, aged 61.
The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study began in 1972.
It followed 1037 babies, born in Dunedin in the 12 months after the study began. Fifty years on, more than 90% of the original cohort, who are still alive, remain in the study.
That almost unmatched retention rate, along with the fact those in the study are interviewed in person – and have been prepared to share details about almost every aspect of their lives – has made the Dunedin Study a celebrated insight into human life, and what shapes it.
Poulton became the study’s deputy director in 1995, before replacing its founder, Dr Phil Silva, as director after his retirement in 2000.
The study was the beloved centre of Poulton’s professional life. A clinical psychologist, prior to running the Study he’d worked for it as a researcher and interviewer, and he had a relationship of immense trust and closeness with many of the people in it.
His wife, Dr Sandhya Ramrakha, who is also the study’s research manager, describes people coming up to them with immense pride and saying, “Richie, I’m one of yours!”
Speaking to John Campbell for TVNZ’s Sunday programme in what would be his final interview, Poulton spoke of his own pride in the study, and his gratitude to those who’ve opened their lives up to it.
“It's the ultimate in pride. The feelings. The responsibilities. The day-to-day activity. The living, the breathing, the heart. Interactions that really are the… kindest, and some most surprising of all the types of interactions… The study is the living embodiment of what the feeling of working hard, doing the right thing and caring for people is all about.”
So great is the respect in which the study’s held, and so significant has its impact been, that what it revealed about adolescent behaviour was responsible for raising the age at which people could be sentenced to death in the United States. Seventy-three people, who were under 18 at the time of their offending, had their death sentences cancelled.
Dunedin Study researchers have published more than 1300 peer-reviewed journal articles, reports and books on many aspects of mental health, physical health, and human behaviour.
In what would be his final interview, the long-serving director called the study the professional love of his life. (Source: Sunday)
In 2016, the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development team, led by Poulton, won the Prime Minister's Science Prize. And in 2017, Richie Poulton was appointed Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (CNZM) in the Queen's Birthday Honours List.
Professor Sir Peter Gluckman, former New Zealand Chief Science Advisor, paid a heartfelt tribute to Poulton.
"Richie didn’t start the Dunedin Study. But he refreshed and extended it. And in doing so, he made it fulfil its potential. In my mind, his biggest contribution may be that he brought quantitative social sciences into public policy in New Zealand. He changed how we think evidence about people should be included in policy making. And this capacity, to connect science, society and policy making, will be very hard to replace," he said.
Poulton spent most of his final weeks at home in Dunedin with his wife and their daughter Priyanka, a law student at the University of Otago.
"Cancer is the biggest joke ever foisted upon humanity,” he told Campbell. “Some of us have to cop it for every generation. My number came up, so just take it and go forward in the queue. That is all you can do."
But he was immensely grateful for his life, and for the people in it, and he included in his celebration of "family" the 1000 people – now middle-aged – who opened their lives up to help us all understand the journey of being human.
"I'm not a religious person so that's an analogy that doesn't work with me that well, but I can say that it's on par with what I imagine a religious experience feels like, except it's a prolonged experience. A prolonged epiphany! And by definition, they’re just short. So we got a wild child with this epiphany. Yeah, it’s been good. It’s been so good."
Poulton's final interview will air on the Sunday programme at 7.30pm this evening on TVNZ1 and on TVNZ+.
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