Health-related food taxes and subsidies: A critique of opposition arguments

Monday, July 27th, 2015 | Kate Sloane | No Comments

Professor Cliona Ni Mhurchu, Associate Professor Nick Wilson, and Professor Tony Blakely

junkfood1Health-related food taxes and subsidies are a hot topic internationally. Emerging research suggests they could improve diets and produce substantial health gains. However, the proposition of food pricing policies often meets with vigorous opposition and a range of counter-arguments relating to potential harms, lack of efficacy, and incursion on personal freedoms. In this blog, we briefly analyse 8 common arguments raised in opposition to such policies, and consider their basis drawing on the best available NZ and international evidence.

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A new online calculator for estimating how much a society might spend on life-saving interventions

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2015 | Kate Sloane | No Comments

By the BODE3 Programme Team*

In this blog we describe an online calculator we developed to estimate the maximum investment society might consider spending on life-saving health interventions, while remaining cost-effective. For NZ, the amounts generated by this calculator vary greatly by age: NZ$ 1.2 million for an intervention to save the life of a child, NZ$ 0.7 million for a 50-year-old, and NZ$ 0.2 million for an 80-year-old, assuming we are willing to spend $45,000 per healthy life-years gained and the person is returned to the expected health status of the average NZ citizen. These results are very sensitive to the choice of discount rate and to the selected cost-effectiveness threshold. Policy-makers could use this calculator as a rapid screening tool to determine if more detailed cost-effectiveness analyses of potential life-saving interventions might be worthwhile.

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Bowel cancer screening – An interesting new US study and thoughts about the NZ situation

Monday, June 29th, 2015 | Kate Sloane | 3 Comments

Professor Tony Blakely, Associate Professor Diana Sarfati

Bowel Cancer Screening picIn this blog post we look at a new modelling study on bowel cancer screening, published in a top US journal (JAMA). We discuss the cost-effectiveness of such screening and consider the current NZ context for bowel cancer screening.

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Flooding, public health – and the need for more emphasis on prevention

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2015 | Kate Sloane | No Comments

Nick Wilson, George Thomson, Paul Blaschke (University of Otago, Wellington)

Recent flooding events in New Zealand should make us think about the adverse public health and economic impacts. This blog post considers these issues, and suggests that there may be scope for further preventive action by central and local government so as to better reduce the health and economic impacts of flooding disasters.

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Potential new regulatory options for e-cigarettes/ANDS in NZ

Monday, May 25th, 2015 | Kate Sloane | 24 Comments

By a group of nine academic tobacco/nicotine researchers*

Smoking e-cigE-cigarette usage is growing in NZ and around the world but the scientific evidence-base regarding the benefits and risks of these types of products remains uncertain. The health-based policy experience is also minimal. In this blog post we outline some of the possible regulatory options around e-cigarettes (alternative nicotine delivery systems – ANDS) that the NZ Government could explore and that further NZ based research could help clarify.

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