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.
Monday, April 8th, 2019 | tedla55p | No Comments
Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Amanda Jones, A/Prof George Thomson
Canada has a number of progressive public policies which can influence health. In this blog we briefly look at 6 potential lessons for NZ in the domains of: (i) responding to climate change; (ii) supporting cycling; (iii) tobacco control; (iv) controls on food marketing directed at children; (v) healthy food guidelines; and (vi) cannabis law reform.
Monday, January 29th, 2018 | dayhi34p | 1 Comment
Prof Nick Wilson, A/Prof George Thomson
The United States has many major health problems – including declining life expectancy and an exorbitantly expensive health care system. However, the large number of state and local governments provide a wealth of potential lessons that NZ could learn from. In this blog we briefly consider some of these, particularly in the domains of support for nutrition and physical activity, tobacco and alcohol control, and pollution control.
Friday, February 3rd, 2017 | Kate Sloane | 1 Comment
Prof Tony Blakely, Prof Cliona Ni Mhurchu
Health Star Rating and Traffic Light nutrition labels have a minor impact on New Zealand consumer healthy food choices, according to a randomised trial just published from our HRC-funded DIET Programme based at the University of Auckland. This is important evidence for policy. We had expected that these simple, visual front of package labels would have more effect on healthy food purchasing choices, but the contrary findings are why randomised trials are important. In this blog we discuss our findings, strengths and weaknesses of the study, and implications of the results.
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.