The Briefing

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. 

Smoking rates have fallen in the 2013 Census compared to the 2006 Census (from 20.7% to 15.1% in adults aged 15+). The results generally fit with other evidence and are good news for health in NZ.

An article we published last week generated plenty of debate in particular on the complexities of taxing food. In this blog, Professor Nick Wilson argues that, yes, such tax packages have to be well designed (and more research would be helpful), but nevertheless that there is much that could be potentially gained by taxes on saturated fat.