What could we do, and what should we not do, to improve public health? This Blog has postings from public health experts on issues such as efficiency, equity, interventions, politics, cost effectiveness and much more.
Tuesday, April 7th, 2015 | Kate Sloane | 4 Comments
Associate Professor Nick Wilson, Dr Peter Gallagher
We have assembled a collection of 35 high quality movies as part of public health teaching for medical students. In this blog post we detail the movies and reflect on some of the aspects that make them both educational and entertaining.
Friday, March 6th, 2015 | Kate Sloane | No Comments
Professor Tony Blakely, Dr Matt Soeberg and Associate Professor Diana Sarfati
Cancer survival estimates for 67 countries have recently been published for 10 cancer sites, in an exhaustive and thorough combined analysis (CONCORD-2). Never before has such a comparable set of survival estimates been available. And New Zealand does okay – not top of the list, but okay. We are usually worse than the country we love (or hate?) to compare ourselves with, Australia. Conversely, we are usually better than the UK – a wealthier country with presumably more healthcare resources at its disposable. This global study puts in context recent specific New Zealand-Australian comparisons – yes, New Zealand could do better but neither is it doing too badly.
Wednesday, February 18th, 2015 | Kate Sloane | No Comments
Associate Professor Nick Wilson
This blog post looks at a recently published study of the lifespan of NZ soldiers who participated in the First World War. It then asks more broadly what is known about the longer term health outcomes for military personnel participating in war – and suggests that such issues need to be considered carefully by governments before participating in foreign military engagements.
Tuesday, November 25th, 2014 | Kate Sloane | No Comments
Professor Alistair Woodward, Associate Professor Nick Wilson
What does Victoria University have in common with Stanford, the Australian National University and the British Medical Association? They have all decided in the last few months to sell off their interests in fossil fuel companies. In this blog post we briefly explore the arguments around such disinvestment from a public health perspective.
Thursday, November 20th, 2014 | Kate Sloane | 3 Comments
Associate Professor Nick Wilson, Professor Richard Edwards, Associate Professor George Thomson, Frederieke S van der Deen, Dr Cristina Cleghorn, Professor Tony Blakely
Previously published NZ-based modelling work has explored business-as-usual trends in smoking prevalence, and the potential roles of interventions such as higher regular tobacco tax increases in achieving the NZ Government’s Smokefree Nation 2025 Goal. As best we can model, 10% per annum increases in tobacco tax alone will not be able to achieve the 2025 Goal. In this blog post we outline our favoured package to achieve the 2025 Goal which is ongoing increases in tobacco taxes, intensification of existing evidence-based tobacco control activities and implementation of a major new ‘endgame’ strategy (such as denicotinisation). This package, especially a new endgame strategy, faces political and implementation hurdles that need research, policy analysis and advocacy to overcome.