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Hearing loss & social isolation – the silent burden
… Untreated hearing loss is a large direct cause of disability and is associated with increased risk of social … 1. This picture was chosen as it illustrates two elderly people in each other’s company. Tying in with the theme of … (14). Barriers to access to hearing health care and how to overcome them The barriers to access in hearing health …
Briefing
Vaping prevalence and trends: Important findings from 2023-24 NZ Health Survey
… among younger age groups, Māori and Pacific peoples, and people living in neighbourhoods with higher levels of deprivation. The findings call for detailed ongoing … driven by substantial increases in vaping among 15–24-year-olds, as shown in Figure 3. Vaping by age group Since …
Briefing
How to best describe NZ’s border control problems around COVID-19 with a possible typology
… Particular words and phrases can frame how issues are considered and the extent to which they imply … system design or delivery. After considering a range of words, we consider that the phrase “border system failure” … a very serious system failure and had a major inquiry with many changes in quarantine processes resulting. “Breach” or …
Briefing
What the Pacific & Mexico can tell us about soft drink taxes and public health
… There are many ways that taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) can … of SSB taxation in improving health outcomes depends on how the SSB tax is designed including communication of a … SSBs (Cook Islands). Tokelau, a small island state of 1600 people, banned sugar sweetened soft drinks altogether since …
Briefing
A major new study on Kiwi health – can it inform decision-making?
… respect to disease burden. It also raises questions as to how useful a burden of disease study is for prioritisation of … health. Comparisons can then be made between types of people, diseases and over time. Key findings include: Cancers … burden of disease study for 1996. But we know from many other statistics (including the recent Global Burden of …
Briefing
NZ’s “Team of 5 million” has achieved the lowest COVID-19 death rate in the OECD – but there are still gaps in our pandemic response
… the lowest death rate from the COVID-19 pandemic out of 37 OECD countries and appears to be the only one to … during the lockdown [2]. This result was probably due to many factors but likely ones included reduced traffic crash … and up to 10 percent of false close contacts, which were people too far away to be clinically considered a close …
Briefing
NZ’s Quitline Service is value-for-money: But how does it compare with other tobacco control actions in a league table?
… modelling only includes 16 tobacco-related diseases (and many others exist). Our model also does not include the … and productivity gains associated with workers who don’t die prematurely from smoking). The cost-effectiveness of the … per the successful “It’s About Whanau” campaign (7-9). But how does this compare with other options? Although the …
Briefing
Flooding, public health – and the need for more emphasis on prevention
… Conversely the economic, health and other benefits to people from maintaining healthy forest and other natural … in flood protection, though the extent of this depends on many factors including: climate, forest type and condition, … in Europe (9), and there is also experimental work on how tree planting reduces water run-off (10). Research in NZ …
Briefing
New modelling on the risk of COVID-19 outbreaks in NZ associated with arriving travellers
… our just published modelling work on estimating the risk of COVID-19 outbreaks associated with air travel to NZ. We … gave a 96% probability of an outbreak in NZ within a year, with a median time to an outbreak of 2.5 months (95% … certainly change over time. They should be reduced if more people in the source countries for travellers and in NZ get …
Briefing
Using a fun “Mask Day” at school to promote pandemic protection in the NZ community
… circulation: a recent evaluation from Spain of 61,000 people found that around a third of those infected were … of the classes, whilst learning about the pandemic and how masks work to protect others in the community. The … public health messages Mass masking is a new norm in many non-Asian high-income countries and behaviour change …
Briefing

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