What could we do, and what should we not do, to improve public health? This Blog has postings from public health experts on issues such as efficiency, equity, interventions, politics, cost effectiveness and much more.
Monday, September 21st, 2015 | Kate Sloane | 3 Comments
Associate Professor Nick Wilson, Dr Nhung Nghiem, Professor Tony Blakely, Professor Rod Jackson
It is now possible to readily estimate individual risk of future cardiovascular events with a large number of online calculators – including a NZ-specific calculator that has been available for some years (“Know Your Numbers”). In this blog we consider if such risk calculators could be improved upon. The clear answer being “yes” – and in many ways.
Wednesday, September 9th, 2015 | Kate Sloane | No Comments
Amanda Wood, PhD candidate, University of Auckland
The Health Minister is currently deciding how to best address children’s poor health due to diet-related diseases. It is a good time to reflect not only on the content of those approaches, but also the regulatory frameworks for those approaches. This blog explores a co-regulatory approach that could be applied to the strengthening of junk food marketing restrictions to children.
Monday, September 7th, 2015 | Kate Sloane | No Comments
Associate Professor Nick Wilson, Dr Christine Cleghorn, William Leung, Dr Osman David Mansoor
Are smartphone apps for weight loss and smoking cessation well-designed? We were involved in a study published in last Friday’s NZ Medical Journal that tried to answer that question from a NZ public health perspective. In this blog we discuss what we found and its implications for ‘what next’ for using these new technological tools for health research and promotion in NZ.
Monday, August 31st, 2015 | Kate Sloane | 1 Comment
Professor Tony Blakely and Professor Alistair Woodward
In this blog we review the latest update by the Ministry of Health on how much of NZers life expectancy can be expected to be in good health. The good news? We are both living longer, and living longer in good health. The bad news? According to this report, the percentage of our lives with some dependency due to poor health is increasing. And there are marked inequalities in healthy life expectancy. This sort of analysis, as hard as it is to get right, is important – as a society we do not want to just live longer, but live longer in good health. However, we have concerns about the accuracy of this Report, and critique it in this blog.
Tuesday, August 18th, 2015 | Kate Sloane | No Comments
Dr Andrea McDonald
There are many ways that taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) can be designed and implemented. These aspects can affect the likely impact on SSB consumption and health. This blog looks at a policy discussion document from the Pacific and explores some of the reasons SSB tax outcomes from Mexico appear to show positive reductions in SSB consumption.