» Home > (Page 4)

Yearly Archives: 2017

Nationwide Colorectal Screening in New Zealand: a tricky balance of improving overall population health and addressing inequalities

Wednesday, July 19th, 2017 | Kate Sloane | 2 Comments

Dr Melissa McLeod and Professor Tony Blakely

In this blog we will discuss a paper recently published in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention [1] by the BODE3 team, which modelled a nationwide colorectal cancer (CRC) screening programme for New Zealand. We used multiple data sources, ranging from the results of the New Zealand pilot screening programme through Waitemata DHB, New Zealand cost and epidemiological data on colorectal cancer, and outputs of screening trials internationally. Similar to modelling from other countries, we found that a national CRC screening programme is highly likely to be cost-effective, and will offer health gains to all screened population groups. However, because Māori in New Zealand are less likely to get CRC, and because screening programmes have been less successful in engaging with Māori, the health gains for the Māori population in New Zealand will be lower, meaning that this screening programme will increase inequalities in overall health for Māori compared to the rest of the population.

Continue reading →

Google Street View – A Useful Research Tool?

Sunday, July 9th, 2017 | Kate Sloane | No Comments

Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Amber Pearson, Amanda Rzotkiewicz, A/Prof George Thomson

Looking at Google Street View can be amusing – as with the image of a cow with its face blurred out by Google’s algorithm for anonymising humans (see here). But this tool can help with research – as we report in a just published review in the journal “Tobacco Control”. In this blog we briefly consider some of the research possibilities of this tool of relevance to public health.

Continue reading →

How much revenue would a New Zealand sugary drink tax raise? And how might be best to do it?

Tuesday, July 4th, 2017 | Kate Sloane | No Comments

Professors Tony Blakely and Cliona Ni Mhurchu

Last week a FIZZ symposium was run in Auckland. A key focus was moving New Zealand towards adopting a sugary drink tax. As part of the policy briefing prepared for this FIZZ Symposium, we were asked to estimate the revenue from such a tax – which we outline here, and estimate to be between $65 and $100 million a year. We also consider implementation options.

Continue reading →

Only eight more years to go to 2025: Time for the NZ Government to step up its tobacco endgame

Thursday, June 29th, 2017 | Kate Sloane | No Comments

Frederieke Sanne van der Deen, Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Christine Cleghorn, Dr Linda Cobiac, Dr Giorgi Kvizhinadze, Dr Nhung Nghiem, Prof Tony Blakely

We have eight more years to go until 2025 – the year of the NZ Government’s Smokefree goal. NZ is not on track to achieve this goal, especially not for Māori. In this blog we discuss the findings of our just published study in Tobacco Control, where we have estimated the future impacts of a range of proposed novel and substantive strategies that may accelerate the reduction in smoking prevalence (ie, ‘tobacco endgame strategies’). We find that some endgame strategies could achieve NZ’s Smokefree goal, deliver large health gains and cost-savings, and could largely reduce the ethnic gap in tobacco-related health inequalities.

Continue reading →

New Standardised Packaging Regulations: Some good steps, but many missed opportunities

Wednesday, June 28th, 2017 | Kate Sloane | No Comments

Professor Janet Hoek and Professor Philip Gendall

The NZ Government’s recently released Standardised Packaging Regulations contain some important advances over Australia’s legislation, but they also miss opportunities to recognise tobacco industry innovations. This blog discusses changes that establish a new benchmark and why these are important, but also examines how the regulations could have gone further and suggests measures that other countries might consider including as they develop their standardised packaging policies.

Continue reading →