Search | PHCC

Meat, health, hospitals, and sustainability*
… that sick people need to eat meat. This is hard to swallow from an organisation that is expounding outdated beliefs and … University Hospital in California serves only vegetarian food and is ranked as the number one hospital in metropolitan … be for all hospitals to initiate Meat-free Mondays and to remove all processed meats from menus now. * This opinion …
Briefing
Calculating cardiovascular risk with online calculators – scope for improvement?
… taxes (1)) and regulations to improve the quality of the food supply (e.g., to limit salt (2)). But individual … designed for the NZ setting (with epidemiological input from one of us: Jackson). Example results are shown in the table below. Table 1: Example results from the online cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk calculator …
Briefing
An open letter to Cabinet Ministers from 74 health professors calling for a sugary drinks tax
… 8 years old require general anaesthetic operations to remove rotten teeth (1). We applaud the government for making … change the consumption of tobacco and alcohol and evidence from over 50 studies in the published literature suggests the … with marked reductions in consumption, even allowing for GST (under plausible scenarios). An excise tax is treated …
Briefing
Reducing the health burden from contaminated drinking water in NZ: Opportunities arising from the new Water Services Bill
… link between water and health. Photo by Daria Shevtsova from Pexels Burden of water-related disease It is conservatively estimated that 34,000 people get sick from drinking water in NZ each year. 1 In addition, the … agency that could manage drinking water safety along with food safety, the protection of borders and other public …
Briefing
The rise and rise of specialist vape stores: Time for the Government to act
… regrets its past actions and now aims to protect rangatahi from exposure to vaping products. VIANZ noted “the … important “where the health and financial burden from tobacco is higher (e.g., in Māori and Pacific peoples)” … were “only a small subset of the total number of fast-food outlets across New Zealand”. However, VIANZ did not …
Briefing
New proposals to limit youth vaping from Labour: Do they go far enough?
… rapid increase in youth vaping, which accelerated rapidly from 2018/19 . Earlier this year, the Government strengthened … choosing to vape daily despite never smoking increasing from 3.1% in 2021 to 4.3% in 2022” [our emphasis]. This … 6630 2423 36.5 * Prevalences of never smoking and vaping from Snapshot Y10 surveys conducted by ASH NZ. # Number of …
Briefing
Ready or not? Pandemic preparedness index and implications for NZ
… by using tools such as the GHS Index, as well as learning from international exemplars such as the UK’s just-released … research. The world may have learned some lessons from Covid-19, but a recent international scenario exercise … of the GHS Index 2019, found that the proportion of deaths from communicable diseases decreased 4.8% for each 10-point …
Briefing
Should NZ spend relatively more health resources on improving men’s health?
… in a Major Report on health loss published last year. From the tabulated data the above graph has been prepared for … of coronary heart disease) “About 60% of the health loss from low vegetable and fruit intake is sustained by males” … not even be noticed by consumers). Alternatively, a junk food tax could reduce dietary salt as well as intakes of …
Briefing
Regulator failure on nitrate in drinking water dumps escalating costs on those downstream
… demonstrates failure by ECan to protect drinking water from nitrate contamination but also suggests the regulator’s … for by rates. Standard drinking water treatment does not remove nitrate and, where ECan has allowed nitrate levels to … assessment in 1991. 20 Likewise, The French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety …
Briefing
Ethnic inequalities in mortality in NZ and how to reduce them further
… inequalities, NZ policy-makers have many options, ranging from equalising socio-economic factors between ethnic groups, … study (3), we update previous studies to include deaths from 2006-2011 and look at the changing ethnic inequalities … as: Mandatory front-of-package health rating labelling of food Banning junk food marketing to children Following other …
Briefing

Subscribe

Public Health Expert Briefing