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Yearly Archives: 2017

“Achieving Smokefree Aotearoa by 2025”: a response to critiques

Friday, October 6th, 2017 | dayhi34p | No Comments

Prof Richard Edwards, Prof Tony Blakely, Prof Chris Cunningham, Frederieke Sanne van der Deen, Stephanie Erick, Zoe Hawke, Prof Janet Hoek, A/Prof George Thomson, Louise Thornley, Anaru Waa, Prof Nick Wilson

The “Achieving Smokefree Aotearoa by 2025” Action Plan was launched at Parliament on 2 August. A previous blog described its key features and a rationale for the recommended measures. This blog addresses critiques of the Plan; it discusses the potential role e-cigarettes could play in achieving the Smokefree 2025 goal and examines how measures in the Action Plan will support people who smoke to either quit or to transition fully from smoking to vaping.

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Climate Change and Recent Actions of NZ Political Parties

Thursday, September 14th, 2017 | dayhi34p | No Comments

Prof Nick Wilson, Prof Richard Edwards, Dr Cristina Cleghorn, Prof Michael Baker, Dr Caroline Shaw, A/Prof Ralph Chapman, Prof Philippa Howden-Chapman

The health organisation OraTaiao convened a group of experts to analyse the climate change policies of NZ political party policies. It gave the highest grade to the Green Party, then the Labour Party, and then The Opportunities Party (TOP). This blog takes a supplementary approach, looking at actual climate related actions taken in the last Parliamentary term (since late 2014). It suggests that relative to its power in the Parliament, the Green Party has done the best. The National Party has an overall poor performance grading – given the many opportunities it has had in Government.

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A Statue of Merit: Dr Margaret Cruickshank and the 1918 influenza pandemic

Monday, September 11th, 2017 | dayhi34p | 4 Comments

Nick Wilson, Ben Schrader, Geoff Rice, Christine Clement, George Thomson, Catharine Ferguson, Michael Baker

Some statues are getting bad press at present – and rightly so for the confederate military statues which represent the racist history of the Southern United States. But in this blog we briefly look at a particular New Zealand statue that we think characterises some of the best aspects of public monuments: the statue of Dr Margaret Cruickshank who died caring for patients during the 1918 influenza pandemic. Continue reading →

“Achieving Smokefree Aotearoa by 2025”: a new Action Plan to achieve our smokefree goal

Thursday, September 7th, 2017 | dayhi34p | No Comments

Richard Edwards, Tony Blakely, Chris Cunningham, Frederieke Sanne van der Deen, Zoe Hawke, Janet Hoek, Shayne Nahu, George Thomson, Louise Thornley, Anaru Waa, Nick Wilson, Stephanie Erick

A new Action Plan was launched by one of New Zealand’s great tobacco control champions – Dame Tariana Turia – at Parliament on August 2. This blog describes the Plan’s key features and the rationale for the proposed measures.

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BODE3 Interactive League Table Series: Prevention versus treatment, voluntary versus mandatory, targeted versus untargeted – can we generalize?

Monday, September 4th, 2017 | dayhi34p | No Comments

Professor Tony Blakely, Dr Giorgi Kvizhinadze, Dr Linda Cobiac and Professor Nick Wilson.

In this fourth blog that features the BODE3 Interactive League Table, we look at substantive findings across the interventions (so far) in the league table.  We use graphs from the league table to cautiously explore (for fear of over-generalizing) what approaches might typically generate the most health gain and be best value-for-money.

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