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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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A 100 years ago today – the likely first NZ death from the 1918 influenza pandemic

Tuesday, August 28th, 2018 | dayhi34p | No Comments

Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Jennifer Summers, Prof Michael Baker

The 1918 influenza pandemic began to kill New Zealanders 100 years ago today. Ultimately it killed 9000 NZ citizens and so is by far the largest natural disaster to hit this country. In this blog we reflect on this event and draw links with the present day pandemic risks (including from synthetic bioweapons). We highlight the importance of continuing to invest in public health infrastructure and pandemic preparedness and planning.

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The case for lowering salt levels in processed foods is now even stronger – new research

Tuesday, June 26th, 2018 | dayhi34p | No Comments

Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Cristina Cleghorn, Dr Nhung Nghiem, Prof Tony Blakely

The scientific case for lowering dietary salt intakes became a bit confused in recent years by studies which suggested that both low sodium (salt) intake and high sodium intake were associated with higher risk of death. But new research suggests that low sodium intakes are not associated with a higher risk of death and the results for low sodium intake in these other studies may be largely due to inaccurate measurement of sodium intake. So the scientific community can now more confidently recommend that governments progress interventions to reduce sodium levels in processed foods. This could substantially benefit health, reduce health inequalities and save health sector costs.

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