719 Results

  • Regulation of alcohol marketing is needed to meet health, wellbeing and equity goals

    … harm, and an explicit commercial conflict of interest. In this blog, the case for regulation of alcohol marketing … need for urgency is made, and ways forward are described. In Aotearoa, alcohol results in a wide range of health and … on children aged 11-13 years, found they were exposed, on average, to alcohol marketing 4.5 times per day across …
    Briefing

  • Open data, transparency and power – role of the Virtual Health Information Network

    … Government is showing strong leadership on data sharing. In this blog we describe some of the opportunities and the challenges in this new data environment. We focus on how the Virtual … The VHIN is a network of health data users, especially in the Statistics NZ Integrated Data Infrastructure, looking …
    Briefing

  • The humility of being second to Australia in cancer mortality

    … Today Alafeishat and colleagues have published a paper in the NZ Medical Journal showing that New Zealand has higher … for most sites. This suggests that there are differences in cancer survival, which appear to be particularly marked … for women. This is important, highlighting room to improve in our health sector. This blog we canvass how bad (or good) …
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  • New Zealanders strongly support policies to curb alcohol harm – will government listen?

    … others. For example, children see alcohol marketing on average 4.5 times daily, and tamariki Māori are exposed five … and the Cancer Society commissioned a Talbot Mills survey in March 2025 assessing NZ adult opinion on the WHO ‘best … that alcohol excise tax increase by at least 50%. 19 On average, this will increase alcohol prices by 10%. A large …
    Briefing

  • Evidence for free school lunches: Are they worth investing in?

    … ways to expand the programme so that all children in Aotearoa New Zealand will benefit; undertaking a formal cost-effectiveness study; and building in more environmental sustainability.  Value for Investment … Students who previously had insufficient food, reported on average feeling 20% fuller after lunch than before the …
    Briefing

  • Why NZ should consider adopting “mass masking” as an additional step to speed elimination of the Covid-19 pandemic

    … Widespread public mask use is common in some Asian countries as a control measure in the current Covid-19 pandemic. There is some suggestive … used to reduce the spread of respiratory infections [1]. In health care settings masks are used widely for infection …
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  • Perspective: Who is responsible for stopping NZ’s obesity epidemic?

    … Editorial note: In this blog-perspective, obesity expert Dr Robyn Toomath … free-market solutions as doomed to fail. The views in this blog are expanded in greater depth in a book Dr … the US, a woman weighing 30kg above ideal weight earned on average 9% less, equivalent to 3 years of work experience or …
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  • How the tobacco industry targets young people to achieve a new generation of smokers

    … reminds us that, despite a new-found interest in ‘ unsmoking ’ the world, and moving smokers to “reduced … smoked tobacco products that will appeal to young people. In this blog, we explore how tobacco companies have continued … fatal, diseases.[2] The overall aim, neatly summarised in a PR strategy as “doubt is our product”,[3, 4] was …
    Briefing

  • Regulating vaping and new nicotine products: Are tobacco companies’ goals aligned with public health objectives?

    … vaping products and alternative nicotine delivery systems. In a previous blog, ASPIRE 2025 researchers summarised the … NGPs or smoked tobacco products. However, as we argue in this blog, the tobacco industry is likely to impede this … A recent report titled Addiction at Any Cost , published in February 2020 by the Stopping Tobacco Organizations and …
    Briefing

  • Red meat & processed meat: Summarising the Public Health isues

    … (1). Over 400 different epidemiological studies on cancer in humans provided data on processed meat and over 700 … not consumed in past 4 weeks)’ processed meat (2), and the average total consumption of processed meat (a narrower … “lifetime bacon-eaters” are not too different from your average New Zealander. A recently published meta-analysis …
    Briefing

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Public Health Expert Briefing (ISSN 2816-1203)