Public Health Expert

Prof Tony Blakely, Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Giorgi Kvizhinadze, Dr Linda Cobiac Last week we introduced the concept of league tables to compare interventions.  This week we provide a brief ‘user guide’ for our just launched BODE3 Interactive League Table.  We walk through how to pull down tables and graphs of health gain (quality-adjusted life-years; QALYs), health system costs and … Read More

Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Nhung Nghiem, Dr Cristina Cleghorn, Dr Frederieke Sanne van der Deen, Prof Tony Blakely We have just published a journal article on the cost-effectiveness of NZ’s Quitline service (including its associated promotion in the mass media). The study found that this intervention package is likely to be an effective means to generate health gain, address … Read More

Prof Alistair Woodward*, A/Prof Andrea t’Mannetje**, Dr Dave McLean**, Prof Jeroen Douwes**, Prof John D Potter** (*Auckland and **Massey Universities) Last year the New Zealand Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) chose not to accept the assessment of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) that the herbicide glyphosate (the active ingredient in “Roundup”) was a “probable carcinogen”. Instead, the EPA … Read More

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Prof. Tony Blakely, Prof. Nick Wilson, Dr. Giorgi Kvizhinadze, Dr. Linda Cobiac This blog introduces league tables, and more specifically the NZ-specific BODE3 Interactive League Table, for comparing interventions on health gain, cost and cost-effectiveness – and potentially many other things.  A league table is a useful tool for researchers and policy-makers to get an informed ‘first impression’ of what are … Read More

Dr Stefanie Vandevijvere, Professor Boyd Swinburn A panel of 71 independent and government experts have undertaken an evaluation of New Zealand Government food environment policies, compared to international best practice.  This is the second such evaluation, the first being in 2014.  In this blog we summarise the findings. There are some areas where New Zealand is at the level of … Read More

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Dr Melissa McLeod and Professor Tony Blakely Nationwide Colorectal Screening in New Zealand: a tricky balance of improving overall population health and addressing inequalities In this blog we will discuss a paper recently published in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention [1] by the BODE3 team, which modelled a nationwide colorectal cancer (CRC) screening programme for New Zealand. We … Read More

Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Amber Pearson, Amanda Rzotkiewicz, A/Prof George Thomson Looking at Google Street View can be highly amusing. If you’ve ever wandered around a neighbourhood with Street View on Google Maps, you’ll have realised that everyone’s faces are blurred. Google is very concerned with privacy, so they’ve implemented an algorithm that finds out which parts of their photos … Read More

How much revenue would a New Zealand sugary drink tax raise? And how might be best to do it? Last week a FIZZ symposium was run in Auckland. A key focus was moving New Zealand towards adopting a sugary drink tax. As part of the policy briefing prepared for this FIZZ Symposium, we were asked to estimate the revenue from … Read More

By Frederieke Sanne van der Deen, Prof Nick Wilson, Dr Christine Cleghorn, Dr Linda Cobiac, Dr Giorgi Kvizhinadze, Dr Nhung Nghiem, Prof Tony Blakely We have eight more years to go until 2025 – the year of the NZ Government’s Smokefree goal. NZ is not on track to achieve this goal, especially not for Māori. In this blog we discuss … Read More

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Professor Janet Hoek and Professor Philip Gendall The NZ Government’s recently released Standardised Packaging Regulations contain some important advances over Australia’s legislation, but they also miss opportunities to recognise tobacco industry innovations. This blog discusses changes that establish a new benchmark and why these are important, but also examines how the regulations could have gone further and suggests … Read More