The Briefing

In this blog post we outline our favoured package to achieve the 2025 Goal which is ongoing increases in tobacco taxes, intensification of existing evidence-based tobacco control activities and implementation of a major new ‘endgame’ strategy (such as denicotinisation).

Given plain packaging of tobacco products will likely increase the tension many smokers experience, simple measures that enhance smokers’ access to cessation support, and affirm their decision to try and quit, could increase the number and success of quit attempts.

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.

In a modelling study we just published in the international journal Tobacco Control, we examined the potential role of increasing tobacco tax for achieving an end to the tobacco epidemic in NZ.

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.

How can we achieve the 2025 goal of a smokefree nation? The best approach to this tobacco endgame, as it is often called, is unclear. In this blog we consider the option of reducing the number of tobacco retail outlets – leaning on a study we have just published.

This blog considers some arguments for and against a ban on the production (other than tobacco grown for personal use), importation and sale of tobacco products, whilst not criminalising the use of tobacco.

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.