Artificially sweetened beverages: What does the latest evidence tell us on health benefits versus harm?

Thursday, November 29th, 2018 | dayhi34p | No Comments

Dr Cristina Cleghorn, Dr Amanda Jones, Dr Andrea Teng, Professor Tony Blakely, Professor Nick Wilson

Reducing consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) is an important current policy issue internationally. One suggested strategy is for people to swap to artificially sweetened beverages (ASBs). But there are multiple concerns about potential health risks of ASBs – although limited evidence and hard data. This blog seeks to briefly summarise current evidence, to inform the public, public health practitioners and policy makers.

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A 100 years ago today a Death Ship from NZ Arrived in Samoa: A Reminder of NZ’s Responsibilities to its South Pacific Neighbours

Wednesday, November 7th, 2018 | dayhi34p | 1 Comment

Prof Nick Wilson, Prof Michael Baker, Dr Jennifer Summers, Dr Matt Boyd, Dr Ramona Tiatia

Today is the 100th anniversary of the arrival of the SS Talune in Western Samoa. This single ship spread the influenza pandemic from NZ to Western Samoa, Tonga, and Fiji. Thanks to the Rt Hon Helen Clark, there has been an official apology to Samoa for NZ’s negligent role in this disaster. In this blog we reflect on this event and consider NZ’s current responsibilities in helping its Pacific neighbours with infectious disease surveillance and pandemic control.

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The health impacts of the First World War for NZ: A Review

Tuesday, October 30th, 2018 | dayhi34p | No Comments

Nick Wilson, George Thomson, Jennifer A Summers, Glyn Harper, Evan Roberts

This blog summarises our just published article on the mortality and morbidity impacts of the First World War on the NZ population. While much is known about the large health burden of this conflict (especially for the direct participants), there are still various knowledge gaps eg, for the health impacts on the home front. The ongoing digitalisation of all the military files and key data abstracted from them should make it easier for researchers to fill these knowledge gaps in coming years.

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Tobacco product innovation in a smokefree world. Oxymoron or commercial cynicism?

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2018 | dayhi34p | No Comments

Janet Hoek and Philip Gendall

Major tobacco companies have presented a vision of a smokefree world, where smoking prevalence has fallen to minimal levels.  This goal has much in common with national tobacco endgame goals and appears to create opportunities for health researchers and smokefree advocates to work collaboratively with a well-resourced industry to achieve a common goal.  Yet, despite their public statements, tobacco companies continue to develop new products, such as flavour capsule cigarettes, that enhance smoking’s appeal.  This product innovation strategy confirms long-held doubts about the sincerity of tobacco companies’ intentions.  We report on our recently published study that examined how flavour capsule cigarettes appeal to non-smokers and smokers.

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Making tobacco less available is both necessary and feasible – New NZ study

Monday, September 24th, 2018 | dayhi34p | No Comments

Dr Lindsay Robertson*

In our recently published work, we studied the impact of the NZ Government preventing new retail outlets from selling tobacco from 2020, while allowing existing retail outlets to continue selling it until they closed or relocated. The estimated outcome would be a 50% decrease in the total number of tobacco retail outlets by 2032. This blog puts these results into the context of tobacco control options for NZ.

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