The Briefing

An Aotearoa CDC will ensure NZ is better prepared for and able to respond to pandemic threats. The potential benefits are large: long-term gains in population health, equity, and economic efficiency.

The Public Health Expert Briefing will be highlighting evidence-informed public health solutions in a new series: Briefings to the Incoming Government.

What are political parties promising to address Māori health inequity and for the future of the Māori Health Authority? This is the fourth in our series - Where do the parties stand?

Over half of workers in New Zealand are exposed to at least one cancer-causing agent in the workplace, according to the NZ Carcinogens Survey. We need a dedicated national service to improve access to screening and healthcare for those at high risk of exposure.

Key lessons from history highlight the need for Māori leadership across all aspects of health to improve Māori health equity for the future.

A recently published review has quantified the estimated benefits and harms of taking regular aspirin for disease prevention. This blog briefly looks at the issues and considers possible responses by NZ health agencies and research funders.

A paper in the NZ Medical Journal shows that New Zealand has higher death rates from cancer than Australia that cannot be explained by higher incidence for most sites. This blog we canvass how bad (or good) the situation really is, the problems and possible sources of error comparing survival across the ditch (it is not easy to do), and we conclude with policy implications.

This is Part 2 of a two-part blog by Dr Caroline Shaw and Associate Professor Diana Sarfati on breast cancer screening. In Part 1 they looked at the contested research around breast cancer screening. In today’s Part 2 they explore the implications for New Zealand.

This week Dr Caroline Shaw and Associate Professor Diana Sarfati consider the pros and cons of breast cancer screening, in light of the growing controversy (mostly in the northern hemisphere) about the possibility that the benefits of breast cancer screening are (much) less than previously thought due to over-detection and other issues.

​ In a just published study we found that the NZ Government’s investment in HPV vaccination for girls is clearly a “good value-for-money” way to protect health – even at the modest 47% coverage. In this blog we discuss these findings and how the country could catch-up to the much higher HPV vaccination coverage levels seen in Australia and the UK. ​