Women who participated in the E Moe, Māmā study, and the child they were pregnant with at the time, were invited to participate in an ongoing programme of research, the Moe Kura project. This programme focuses on mother and child sleep, exploring the factors that affect it and how sleep impacts the health and wellbeing of both mother and child.

Data has been collected from 295 Māori women and 618 non-Māori women when their E Moe, Māmā child reached 3 years of age. This information was used by Dee Muller and Clare Ladyman as part of their doctoral research.

Dee’s project was focused on the social determinants of preschool children’s sleep in Aotearoa/New Zealand and will investigate whether the ethnic and socioeconomic disparities evident for adults’ sleep in Aotearoa/New Zealand also exist for young children. Dee was a Massey University Doctoral Scholar and recipient of a new New Zealand Massey Foundation grant. Her thesis is planned for completion in 2018.

Clare’s doctoral research looked at maternal sleep and mental health data from the E Moe Mama and Moe Kura studies to determine if women experiencing depressive symptoms or sleep disruptions in pregnancy are more or less likely to experience persistent poor sleep or persistent depressive symptoms three years post birth. It also included the Sleep HAPi project, which examined whether a sleep education program in pregnancy has an effect on depressive symptoms in women who have a prior history of depression. Women having their first baby, who are less than 13 weeks pregnant and who have a prior history of depression, are currently being recruited.