Sciblogs | Public Health Expert Archives

Government funding of interpreters in Primary Care is needed to ensure quality care

Public Health Expert • May 18, 2022

A/Prof Ben Gray* Gray B. Government funding of interpreters in Primary Care is needed to ensure quality care. Public Health Expert Blog.17 May 2022. The pandemic has highlighted many problems in the NZ health system. This blog will address the question of availability of interpreters for people with limited English proficiency (LEP). This is now funded within hospitals. It is … Read More

Covid-19 Case-Fatality Risk & Infection-Fatality Risk – important measures to help guide the pandemic response

Public Health Expert • May 11, 2022

Dr Jennifer Summers, Professor Michael Baker, Professor Nick Wilson* Summers J, Baker M, Wilson N. Covid-19 Case-Fatality Risk & Infection-Fatality Risk: important measures to help guide the pandemic response. Public Health Expert Blog. 11 May 2022. In this blog we explore two useful mortality indicators: Case-Fatality Risk (CFR) and Infection-Fatality Risk (IFR). We estimate the cumulative CFR in Aotearoa New … Read More

Sustained Resilience: the impact of nuclear war on New Zealand and how to mitigate catastrophe

Public Health Expert • Apr 13, 2022

Dr Matt Boyd & Prof Nick Wilson* (Syndicated from the Adapt Research Blog) Efforts to prevent nuclear war should be greatly intensified – but we must also consider what happens if prevention fails. NZ is often cited as somewhere most likely to preserve a thriving society through a nuclear aftermath. However, our society is a complex adaptive system heavily … Read More

The Omicron waves – Comparing Aotearoa NZ and Australia in four key graphs

Public Health Expert • Apr 12, 2022

Dr Jennifer Summers, Prof Michael Baker, Prof Nick Wilson* Summers J, Baker M, Wilson N. The Omicron waves – Comparing Aotearoa NZ and Australia in four key graphs. Public Health Expert Blog. 12 April 2022. In this blog we explore the first Covid-19 Omicron variant waves in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ). We find that Australia’s first Omicron wave … Read More

Junk food and sugar-sweetened beverage taxes: Likely to produce numerous benefits in NZ

Public Health Expert • Apr 11, 2022

Dr Leah Grout, Dr Nhung Nghiem, Dr Christine Cleghorn* Poor diet is a major risk factor for excess weight gain and obesity-related diseases, including cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes mellitus, osteoarthritis, and multiple cancers. In this blog we summarise our recent modelling work that suggests that the implementation of taxes on unhealthy foods and beverages in Aotearoa New Zealand … Read More

Smoking denormalization and tobacco endgames

Public Health Expert • Mar 24, 2022

Janet Hoek, Richard Edwards, Andrew Waa* Once a common practice, smoking prevalence has declined since its peak in the 1960s, after the serious health risks it poses became clear. Government policies and social marketing campaigns have progressively reduced smoking’s acceptability; however, slow reductions in prevalence have seen inequities persist and led some governments to adopt tobacco endgame strategies that rapidly … Read More

Long COVID: a crucial reason for vax, mask, and distance

Public Health Expert • Mar 22, 2022

Prof John D. Potter* Long COVID occurs in at least 20-30% of individuals who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 and is strongly related to the severity of the initial illness. There are insufficient data to provide a trajectory or a timeline for duration and resolution. The downstream damage can affect: brain, heart, lungs, pancreatic beta cells (resulting in diabetes), muscles, … Read More

Covid-19 Hospitalisations Now Peaking in Aotearoa NZ – But Key Covid-19 Control Measures Still Need to be Maintained

Public Health Expert • Mar 21, 2022

Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Jennifer Summers, Prof Michael Baker* In this blog we present hospitalisation data for Covid-19 suggesting that the numbers are now peaking across the country. To date, the peak burden of hospitalisations and ICU admissions in NZ has been lower than the peaks in Australia. Although various Covid-19 control measures are being de-escalated, we detail reasons why … Read More

Establishing Long COVID services in Aotearoa NZ – what can we learn from overseas?

Public Health Expert • Mar 21, 2022

Robyn Whittaker, Rosie Dobson, Felicity Oh, Sharon Russell, Karen Carter, Penny Andrew* Long COVID (LC) is becoming a substantial issue internationally and many countries are establishing dedicated health services to support people with the condition. In this blog, we discuss what LC services look like overseas and identify key components and considerations for the development of high quality and culturally … Read More

Featured image: Putin and the Bomb: Why New Zealand national risk assessments should include planning for the potential impacts of nuclear winter

Putin and the Bomb: Why New Zealand national risk assessments should include planning for the potential impacts of nuclear winter

Public Health Expert • Mar 14, 2022

Dr Matt Boyd & Prof Nick Wilson* (Syndicated from the Adapt Research Blog) In this blog we briefly review the literature on the probability of nuclear war and what various models estimate to be the potential global climate impacts (eg, of nuclear winter). Although New Zealand is relatively well placed as a major food producer – a … Read More