The Briefing

At the Public Health Congress in Auckland last week, one of us presented on potential public health endgames – partly to inform thinking around the tobacco endgame in New Zealand (the Smokefree Nation Goal for 2025). This blog considers what additional endgames this country could be bolder about tackling.

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. ​

This blog considers the key recent evidence relating to prostate cancer screening.  There remain many problematic issues with this type of screening – including the cloudy nature of the overall evidence on benefits vs harms. 

This blog summarises key data and considers the major risk factors determining poorer male health. It then discusses if there is a plausible case for shifting more of the available health resources towards improving male health.