What can we learn from Healthy Housing Initiatives? New evidence from the Wellington Well Homes scheme

Wednesday, July 17th, 2019 | tedla55p | No Comments

Elinor Chisholm, Nevil Pierse, Cheryl Davies, Philippa Howden-Chapman

We know that poor housing conditions result in ill health for many New Zealanders, and we know which interventions are required to ensure good quality housing that supports health. Healthy Housing Initiatives intervene to improve the homes of kids who are hospitalised for illnesses that could be related to poor housing conditions. In this blog post, we draw on recently published research to gain insights about housing and health, and explore views about the effectiveness of these Ministry of Health-funded programmes.

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How should we manage the harm caused by tobacco product waste?

Friday, June 14th, 2019 | tedla55p | No Comments

Professor Janet Hoek and Emeritus Professor Philip Gendall

Annual consumption of cigarettes now exceeds five trillion, with around four trillion butts littered every year. These cigarette butts cause major environmental damage and impose significant clean-up costs on local authorities. Although tobacco companies have framed smokers as responsible for butt litter, recent debate has focused on the tobacco industry’s role in creating tobacco product waste (TPW) and its responsibility for managing this problem.  We recently examined public perceptions of TPW in New Zealand and allocation of responsibility for creating and managing it.

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Lessons from Canada for NZ: Carbon, Cycling, Tobacco, Nutrition and Cannabis

Monday, April 8th, 2019 | tedla55p | No Comments

Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Amanda Jones, A/Prof George Thomson

Canada has a number of progressive public policies which can influence health. In this blog we briefly look at 6 potential lessons for NZ in the domains of: (i) responding to climate change; (ii) supporting cycling; (iii) tobacco control; (iv) controls on food marketing directed at children; (v) healthy food guidelines; and (vi) cannabis law reform.

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Limiting the size of single serve sugary drinks: New NZ study on health and cost impacts

Monday, April 1st, 2019 | tedla55p | No Comments

Dr Cristina Cleghorn, Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Helen Eyles

There is a lot of focus on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) internationally, due to their role in tooth decay, obesity and diabetes [1-3], their lack of beneficial nutrients, and potential acceptability as an intervention target [4]. Our just published study has shown that an intervention to reduce the size of all single serve SSBs would probably be cost-effective in NZ [5]. In this Blog we elaborate on the issues and consider this intervention in the context of other interventions for addressing NZ’s obesogenic environment.

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Vaping very likely to be improving health in NZ – but how does this compare with other options?

Monday, March 25th, 2019 | tedla55p | No Comments

Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Frederieke Petrović-van der Deen, Dr Cristina Cleghorn, A/Prof Coral Gartner, Prof Tony Blakely

Our just published modelling study suggests that easier access to nicotine via vaping as a replacement for tobacco smoking, will improve the health of the NZ population. The estimated health gain is about the same as 10% per annum tobacco tax increases per year for 15 years, or a national colorectal cancer screening programme. Considering all sources of uncertainty, our study supports cautious liberalisation of nicotine-containing e-cigarettes – as NZ is doing. In this blog we discuss this new study and issues that policy-makers should consider to maximise the potential health gain – and minimise risks.

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