NZ’s Quitline Service is value-for-money: But how does it compare with other tobacco control actions in a league table?

Monday, August 21st, 2017 | Kate Sloane | 1 Comment

Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Nhung Nghiem, Dr Cristina Cleghorn, Dr Frederieke Sanne van der Deen, Prof Tony Blakely

We have just published a journal article on the cost-effectiveness of NZ’s Quitline service (including its associated promotion in the mass media). The study found that this intervention package is likely to be an effective means to generate health gain, address health inequalities and save costs for the NZ health system. But in this blog we also compare the New Zealand Quitline intervention with other tobacco interventions using our just launched BODE3 Interactive League Table, and find that whilst the Quitline is a good thing to do, much more health gain is possible through other tobacco control interventions.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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